Fat Boys — On and On

«Then came the day we knew we were finished.

Gentlemen, Us magazine just came out with its what's hot and what's not issue.

Are we hot?

We are not.»

From a purely technical point of view, it's no worse than the last album of the group. And, in fact, it has a first part that can be listened to, the group abandons — finally — the hardcore delivery preferring a more easy-going, light, quiet one. And despite the revisable lyrics, it partly works. Unfortunately, the Fat Boys are therefore not sure where to bring this project, they're now at the edge of the game: the g-funk tune ("Get Down") is as out of place as the subsequent reggae crossover ("T'ings Nah Go So").

When it seems that the group has also almost abandoned the skeletal hardcore rhythms, here is "Just Loungin'", it just doesn't work: it's the unique single of the disk and ends #86 in the rnb chart, the fifteen and last song charted by Fat Boys. Before this track, excluding the absolutely average "On and On", there's "It's Gettin 'Hot". Why dwell on such a tune? To avoid it. Slow rhythm, skeletal, danceable, with a vicious hook and forced delivery, it's among the worst (perhaps the worst) of the album.

Fifteen tracks may be few, but this journey begins to be exhausting starting with the number six song. After a basically instrumental flat track ("Knock'em Out the Box"), the group returns to drops hardcore in "She's Hookin'"; a couple of negligible ballads await us in the finale before the outro of Dr. Dre & Ed Lover, who introduced this watered-down album.

This is their last record published by Charlie Stettler Tin Pan Apple Records and by Mercury with distribution by PolyGram: the disk gets the worst audience response for album created by the trio thus far, barely entering the pop chart (#175) and failing to make their way into the top 50 of rnb records for the first time in their career.

Rating: 2.5/10.