MC Ren — Shock of the Hour

MC Ren comes from the success of his 1992 EP, which is a promotional effort for his debut album, "Life Sentence". In the course of recording the disk, the former NWA approaches the Nation of Islam and converts to Islam, discarding the entire album and starting to record new songs for a new record, "Shock of the Hour", a quote from a speech by Louis Farrakhan.

The record has its own internal dualism: MC Ren decides to keep some cuts of "Life Sentence" for the first part of the CD, which presents typical gangsta and also socio-conscious topics, also removing the glossy of the gangsta that made him a star in the late eighties and early nineties. While in the second part of the LP, Ren devotes himself to prophetic, political and religious themes. Tootie and Doctor Jam are the main producers of the edition, some rhythm is provided by Rhythum D and Madness 4 Real. Several of Ren's friends introduce themselves as guests during the record, in particular in the posse "One False Move" and in "Mr. Fuck Up", a cut written, co-produced and also performed by Jermaine "Juvenile" Patterson, the rapper's younger brother. Kam, close to NWA, is featured on the title track.

The rapper is the last of NWA to release a solo album, excluding Yella. The guys in production make funky beats with honest samples, lean and slow, sometimes tight drum machine, bombastic bass lines and cheap synths that keep g-funk vibes and seem to want to copy and mimic the sound popularized by Dr. Dre: the result is a hard, slow, heavy and powerful musical carpet, supporting MC Ren's dark, solid and evil bars. He creates an album of 43 minutes and 11 tracks that has some good traits and is his best solo product, but isn't in the least equal to his work with NWA, the one on Eazy-E's debut record or that of his EP released a year earlier: this is mainly due to the decline in the quality of the lyrics, there's poor bars for a lyricist of his level.

Although, he maintains an aggressive, violent and tight style of rapping, Ren is uninspired and appears confused, he cleans up the gangsta style in his single, but doesn't shy away from pulling out sexist and misogynistic lines at the first opportunity, only to fall into racism in the second section. There's no Eazy-E personality nor Ice Cube bars or Dre inventive music here, the whole album suffers: the record is irregular, without bangers and without a minimum replay value, it's not a necessary listening even for N.W.A fans, however, Ruthless and Relativity do a great job in promotion and the disk ends up in the top 25 of the pop chart and in first place among rap records, reaching the top of the charts a few weeks after the release "It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa", and then ousted from the albums of rivals Snoop Doggy Dogg and Ice Cube in the following weeks.

Rating: 6.5/10.