How difficult is the second album? One of the thousands of perfect examples can be found in the second of the Souls of Mischief, Oaktown rap group made up of four rappers, Tajai, Opio, A-Plus, and Phesto.
The production is carried out by the collective Hieroglyphics: behind the keyboards there are A-Plus, Opio, Tajai, Jay-Biz, Casual, Snupe, DJ Tour, and Del tha Funky Homosapien, while the scratches are performed by DJ Apollo of Invisible Skratch Piklz. Crew members Pep Love and Del tha Funky Homosapien are the only guests of the edition.
Released by Jive, the tape has an honest commercial result (it enters pop records, top 30 in the rap chart) and is ignored by critics, partly dusted off the shelves by some guys in retrospect and by completists. It's different from the debut, it hits in a different way, it's another thing. The boys are still young, but they aren't those young ones. They aren't as young as two years ago. The four rappers have never been good lyricists, apart from that, here they're unable to provide memorable lyrics or good productions: they mostly try poor party cuts and battle raps with poor arguments, lyrics in a cast performed with a slow and poor rap style on rigid beats.
None of the four are doing anything to stand out from the other three, while the group tries to make some songs for the club to stay relevant in the game. Sixteen tracks, different skits, one hour of listening, overall, the disc is generic and forgettable: the titles of the songs show the lack of inspiration of the group and try to recall the origins of the game, on one of these titles comes the song that seems the most successful, "Ya Don't Stop", where the guys spit with a regular style over an honest beat with good samples and a decent drum. Not recommended, 4.5/10.
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