Memphis Bleek releases his second LP just a year after his debut. In this period of time he participated in the albums of Warren G ("I Want It All"), Jay-Z ("Vol. 3", "Dynasty"), Beanie Sigel ("The Truth"), Sauce Money ("Middle Finger U.") and Amil ("All Money Is Legal"). With the exceptions of Just Blaze and Timbaland, the music isn't provided by big names, while among the guests stand out Missy Elliott, Amil, Twista, Beanie Sigel, Carl Thomas, H Money Bags and Jay-Z, the album's main guest with five appearances.
The album is introduced by a song produced by Just Blaze: the beat chosen is light-hearted and mainstream with a shrill soul sample on which Bleek spits bars for a couple of minutes. "Do My..." follows, chosen as the third single of the CD: the guy behind the keyboards makes a terrible skeletal beat for a track that goes straight to the club, no one can save this garbage, not even Jay-Z. The beatmaker TT does a nice job with "I Get High", track number three: glossy, elegant production, the beat is floating, suspended in the air, excellent, too bad there's Bleek here, with his rapping he adds absolutely nothing to the piece. There's a second production by Just Blaze in the first four tracks. Now I don't know what happened to the Blaze beats here, but they are one worse than the other, almost all unlistenable: this for "We Get Low" is unbearable and annoying as hell, terrible. The Brooklyn rapper doesn't stop, his style has improved since his debut, but the music is awful.
Roc-A-Fella trio Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek reunite for "Change Up": Robert "Shim" Kirkland changes rhythm three times for this piece, choosing a lean, skeletal style, Memph and Beans spit decently and the music is so good that Hova decides not to deliver his verse. The sixth choice is the remix of the album's first promotional single released nine months earlier: honest, cheap, cheap boom bap by DJ Twinz, Jay-Z alone takes the track to its destination by dissing an unknown guy from Harlem World who had attacked him in a song from Dame Grease. Bleek and H Money Bags have no good style, Sigel rips the cut. The same Philadelphia emcee also duets with Bleek in "Hustlers", on a melodic beat that lives on an ethereal female gospel loop. The choice of producer Jose "Lace" Batiz is good, inside Carter's two protégés construct one of the best cuts on the album, even if not memorable.
Track number eight features yet another amateur behind the keyboards, Eddie Scoresazy comes up with a bouncy beat and mediocre for a Bleek solo track in which the guy poorly spits out unnecessary bars. Maybe at a minute and a half it would be a decent track, it's definitely not at four. Kirkland returns behind the keyboards in "PYT", Roc-A-Fella's posse together with Amil and Jay-Z: this guy's choice is bouncy, pop and skeletal, these all sound like glossy Neptunes rhythms with a hint of jazz. Bleek spit bars with inspired style, Amil is Amil, finally, I don't know what Kirkland did to him, but Hova doesn't seem to want to deliver a single full verse on this guy's beats, at least, not on this LP. The cut is decent overall. Lofey is the author of production number ten, a mainstream bouncy pick and unlistenable that welcomes Memphis Bleek's sparse rap with open arms.
Just Blaze returns in "They'll Never Play Me" and disappoints for the third time: his liquid solution is dark, bouncy, mainstream and pop, Bleek jumps on it like it's a '96 Wu-Tang production, Blaze confirms that he gave this guy three discards, although the dark beat may also be appreciated by some. EZ Elpee comes in to provide a radio assist to Bleek with a questionable and controversial pick which rewards neither the rapper's below-average performance nor guest singer Carl Thomas's melodic rnb hook. Track number thirteen is the album's second single: originally, the song was included in the European edition of Jay-Z's album "Vol. 3", everyone is on it except Bleek, who records his lyrics for this song only later and puts it here. Timbaland appears on the record bringing with him a generic mainstream beat and Missy Elliott. There's still Missy Elliott's hook, there are Jay's three original verses that open and close the song, there are two from Memphis and there's Twista, who leaves and goes away. For track number fourteen my notes say that there's Just Blaze, instead it seems that the producer is Duane DaRock Ramos. The drum is mitigated, light, midtempo, Bleek delivers with good style for once in these fifty minutes, the Foreigner sample is used for the hook and this gives rise to a good soft rap track that is worth appreciating.
Memphis Bleek's second album in two years isn't too far from his debut. Released by Roc-A-Fella and its Get Low Records under the common Def Jam umbrella, distributed by Universal, the album brings the Brooklyn rapper back to first place on the hip-hop charts and among the top twenty releases on the Billboard 200, being certified gold by the RIAA one month after release and surpassing its predecessor in sales. There are some honest tracks, thanks to other artists, and it's not a recommended listen for fans of East Coast hip-hop.
Rating: 4.5/10.
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