Aaron Tyler made his solo debut in 1994, aged 23, after releasing three strong albums with Compton's Most Wanted: MC Eiht is at the height of his career, he comes straight from a classic album and popularized by his supporting role in the cult movie "Menace II Society" (1993), taking part in the soundtrack with the track "Streiht Up Menace", a track overshadowed by that of Spice 1, which initially had to play the role of the main protagonist. For his debut, Eiht makes some clever commercial moves: he keeps the name of CMW in the cover and among the authors of the disc, because the group has a large niche of fans and has gone better every year in the charts, and removes CMW themselves from the construction of the album which, therefore, despite the title, is a fully solo effort by MC Eiht.
This choice doesn't pay from the musical point of view: Eiht and DJ Slip are responsible for over half of the production of Compton's Most Wanted previous LP, nevertheless, here they cannot repeat the magic, giving up the melodic samples and preferring them more g-funk synths, pianos, keyboards (where William Zimmermann aka Willie-Z excels again), organs, strings and horns, in order to build a dark funky soundscape. The melodic and mobb samples haven't completely disappeared, but have a lower impact on the overall quality of the product, combined with a dynamic drum machine often downtempo and midtempo. On these rhythms, Eiht doesn't move from his lucky comfort zone, lyrically gangsta and violent, reciting stanzas with a rap that sounds slow, relaxed, almost without strength, without energy: sometimes the beat favors his style ("Def Wish III", "All for the Money", "Goin 'Out Like Geez", "Compton Bomb"), sometimes not. The production isn't totally mediocre, but falls in the second part, raised only by the rappers performances: e.g., in "Nuthin' but the Gangsta", Redman and Spice 1 turn on the cut that features a relaxed organ together with a dirty and dusty midtempo drum.
Released by Sony via Epic Street, the album rewards MC Eiht's commercial choices and flies to the top of rap records and to the fifth place on the Billboard 200, crowning sales success with RIAA Gold Certification in two months. It's happily received by critics and is, probably, the best solo work in the artist's career, but the project isn't on par with previous Compton's Most Wanted albums.
Rating: 7.3/10.
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