AMG says this one is good - I had previously satisfied myself with Amerikkka's Most Wanted, but I was curious where else he had to go with that approach.
I'm hard to please when it comes to rap. I love hard-hitting, sharp-edged, percussive rapping, but I still find endless murder fantasies numbing, and the two go hand in hand. Ice Cube is probably the best example. His rhyme structures aren't especially inventive. You know going in that all the rhymes are going to be at the end of the line, but at least he spends the rest of the line setting up that whip-crack at the end to hit hard, over and over and over again. The problem is that it's so relentless, so often about killing dudes or selling drugs or bitches and ho's and all the usual stuff. There's some jokey stuff mixed in that I don't remember there being much of on AMW, and for the most part it clashes with the violence. Look, are you a stone cold killer or the court jester? Trying to be both seems more unseemly than either.
On the other hand, there are moments here where Cube seems insecure, frustrated and scared, which makes him more human. At least for a while. Then its killing time again.
Productionwise, there are some great basslines and some pretty good beats, especially after the death/life turnaround in the middle. The pacing is snappy for a while, but then, like so many rap albums of the era, it long overstays its welcome.
I don't think this guy is for me, but it was worth hearing another album's worth. I'm slowly starting to get what the golden age scene was about, which is a tricky project for someone who couldn't be less in the target audience, and who only started listening to this stuff years after the era had ended 2.5/5
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