In 2008 Fat Joe releases his eight studio album. The production is handled by LV, Sean C, Cool & Dre, DJ Khaled, Streetruner, Steve Morales, J Starz, Danja, Swizz Beatz, Mario Winans, Scott Storch, The Runners, The Alchemist and DJ Premier. The guests are Lil Wane, Dre, Plies, Swizz Beatz, Jackie Rubio, Poo Bear, J. Holiday, Opera Steve, Rick Ross, Oz Fox and KRS-One.
The first song of the disk is "The Fugitive". Streetrunner invents a dirty boom bap rhythm where Joey Crack struggles to find adherence on it, eventually slips away, he's forced to dust off the "flow joe" to get you understand that he isn't struggling, when in reality it's exactly the opposite. He gasps, drowns in this production, it serves little that hint of a non-looped soul sample in the background that is there to offer him its hand and save him from drowning, but then he portrays immediately, he jokes and watches him die.
It closes with an outro spoken, as intro there's worse but you could do better and you could choose a beat more appropriate to his delivery style. The next tune is a little better thanks to Cool & Dre: in fact, they come to rescue him with a powerful, dirty, fat, bumpy, licentious boom bap, prepared just for Joe. Together with him, Dre and Plies, indeed here he goes wild starting along with a rapid execution but neither flowing nor loose, he gasps, but he does it in his style.
The following songs are a series of bad attempts, starting from the heavy beat by Steve Morales and J Starz in "The Crackhouse", where Joe delivers wrong, really poor verse with Weezy's functional hook — a similar formula brought Don Cartagena to success just few months earlier with "Make It Rain" — the typical entry and the standard beat of DJ Khaled, a boom bap so heavy to just confuse, it really takes too many elements, inside Joe must scream to make himself clear over this rhythm, hook screamed by Poo Bear, bridge worthy of (and perhaps inspired by) Supa Hot Fire.
Track number four answers to the name of "Cocababy", a Latin hit who wants Jackie Rubio on a beat pressed by Danja, Joe delivers average. But the lowest peak of the record's reach with "Drop". Swizz Beatz takes the album from the mud to the shit, with one of the most fat and gross beat that a human being can ever hear. Jackie Rubio on the chorus but what's the point on this stuff? The simplistic verses of the Puerto Rican rapper have the same end in a track for the club which doesn't seem to have any pretensions.
From the second half, the LP gets up with LV (+ Sean C + Mario Winans) which changes pace at all and gives a light musical carpet to Joe with Holiday's soul hook, straight for the mainstream but done decently at least. In this disturbed mental state, we come to "KAR", second solo by Joe on Streetrunner's jazzy boom bap, good cut. "300 Brolic" (LV & Sean C's good boom bap) and Storch's tune (skeletal, forced and bouncy production) are pretty average and are a mediocre momentum for the final level: The Alchemist and DJ Premier arrive at the end for try saving the whole record.
The Alchemist is phenomenal in "My Conscience", with a high profile beat, Don Cartagena delivers the smoothest possible and ends up sounding bad, KRS-One sounds better, convinced without hesitation, straight ahead. DJ Premier sends a soundscape with his formula, he's perfect here too with a jazzy anthology boom bap, Fat Joe can't go wrong up here. There would be a bonus track with Rick Ross (and Oz Fox over a beat created by The Runners) but forget it.
Released by Terror Squad and Imperial Records under EMI, pushed by one of his latest hits "I Won't Tell" (#3 among rap singles), it sells less than 50.000 copies in its first week, peaking #6 in the Billboard 200, third in the rap chart and being modestly received by music critics, which highlight a profound lack of cohesion in the project, more or less at the level of his latest albums, if not worse, and a lack of chemistry between the author and his producers. Limiting himself to three solo tracks out of twelve, he demonstrates to be no longer able to withstand the rhythms of a solo album.
Lyrically, the main rapper is under the mediocre level. It seems to copy Weezy here too. Musically, not good in spite of the remarkable series of known and capable producers. Like almost every Joe album, the best comes in the second part, but here the first one's disastrous. Alchemist and DJ Premier arrive late to save him: if you have to, listen only to the last two tracks. Without those, this effort should be classified one out five. It should be the album that brings Joey Crack back to the game's commercial top. It's not, in the end.
Rating: 4/10.
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