Two years after his debut as a solo rapper, Lawrence "KRS-One" Parker releases his second studio album. The Bronx MC self-produces six tracks, the rest of the rhythm set is complemented by DJ Premier, with three tracks, Diamond D with two, Showbiz, Norty Cotto and Big French Productions with one beat each. The guests are Fat Joe, Channel Live, Mad Lion, Das EFX and Busta Rhymes, as well as hundreds of artists and personalities who pay homage to the figure of Parker in different skits at the end of the songs. The formula of the disc doesn't change from the previous work, boom bap production and dynamic bars performed hardcore. The lyricist shows his dynamism again with the pen, writing fluidly on topics ranging from socio-conscious to braggadocio, passing through political, religion, and hip-hop themes.
The soundscape carefully constructed by Teacha and the other guys, is solid and coherent: dry and hard midtempo or downtempo drums, shiny bass lines, pleasant and accessible samples. Without looking at the tracklist, you can guess how Kris Parker's choices behind the keyboards aren't on par with those of DITC or Premier: his solutions aren't bad or weak, trivially they sound minimal and poor from a sonorous point of view. "Out for Fame", with an uptempo drum, and "Ah-Yeah" are two of his best rhythms. The choices of Diamond D don't convince me particularly, they're good, but I don't consider them up to the level of the top production of the disc. The other DITC beatmaker, Showbiz, realizes one of the highlights of the album: "Represent the Real Hip Hop" is a cut also present on the Das EFX album of the same year and sees KRS destroy the track on a great boom bap production of Show, which brings to this CD a slightly dark and different sound than usual.
The performance of the main interpreter is regular, energetic, fresh, sometimes influenced by the ragga, always fluid. The album starts very well with the first four songs, thanks to an amazing production and great rapping, then it drops in intensity. "Rappaz R. N. Dainja" is one of the highlights of KRS-One's musical career: simple hook, boom bap, dry midtempo drum, DJ Premier's excellent jazz loops, MC's dope delivery. The second track boasts an interesting beat by Big French Productions, and good rapping ragga influenced by Parker. Track number three is another masterpiece and one of his signature songs: Perfect drum, dissonant samples, great short loops, hardcore, crisp, clean delivery of KRS, who kills the track with incredible rap and lyrics focused on weak MCs, he destroys the beat, phenomenal.
With 14 cuts and 66 minutes, it obviously suffers from those celebratory skits intended by the author that do nothing but stretch the length of the tracks and take the entire product beyond the natural replay value. The album isn't as strong all the time as in the first twenty minutes and it doesn't reach the great moments of the beginning even when DJ Premier returns to produce for "Wannabemceez", a joint ragga with Mad Lion. Lawrence Parker has never had too much imagination either for the titles of his albums or for the covers, which is why his second solo album (seventh including the records with BDP) doesn't have a real title. Look at this cover, it's completely uninspired, there's the name on top of a monochromatic photo of his half face. If you get a chance to look at his discography in its entirety, you can see it clearly: he could win in a challenge to the worst titles and worst covers in hip-hop.
Released by Jive Records, the album is one of his biggest sales results, reaching the top twenty of the pop chart and second among hip-hop releases, carving out a space also in the UK. The record retains its solidity, is strong, hard, tight, one of the best of the year, praised more in retrospect than at the time of release: KRS sounds at his best and creates what most fans consider to be his last amazing LP. 8.4/10.
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