Diddley's soaring voice, playful guitar, and shuffledup beat are still here on this, his second album after the similarly-titled (and excellent) Bo Diddley. Some of the tricks backtrack over some pretty familiar territory: Oh Yeah apes I'm A Man, Willie and Lillie copies Hey Bo Diddley, You Don't Love Me steals the chorus hook from Bring it to Jerome, Say Man samples Hush Your Mouth, and Don't Let it Goes more or less outlines the platonic Bo Diddley song with its call-and-response backing, tinkling guitar and signature beat. The man had a sound and he rode it.
Its also a curiously adventurous album though, jaunty, sprighty, and generally more fun, wit more crooning and Do Wop gestures. Not to mention the weirdly prescient "Yo Mama" jousting on Say Man, portending hip hop's one-upsmanship to come and the bizarro, throwback violin solo on The Clock Strikes Twelve, giving the entire thing a foreboding, haunted house stomp.
In short, it may have come out in 1959, when albums were sometimes just loose song collections rather than unified statements, but this is the classic second-album album: tweak the sound that got you here just enough to be interesting without alienating your fans, copy your biggest hits, take a couple of chances scattered throughout the album and see how it fares.
For me, the moments of adventurousness are joyous, but the familiarity and lack of cohesion keep it from rising to the heights of Diddey's debut 4/5
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