After three years of silence, Just-Ice returns to release a studio album, his fifth one. Kurtis Mantronik produces the first five tracks, O.C. Rodriguez produces the last five, for a total of ten cuts and no guests.
The guy is still uninspired, perhaps less inspired than three years ago, and he's still behind its times: gangsta rap has exploded, and he finds himself ape a few thug bars over these boring and simplistic beats. Musically, it's not horrible, Mantronik committed himself in the opening cut, with an interesting hip house / electro beat with sci-fi vibes, but the rapper delivers with a slow and light-hearted style enough to make your arms going to drop off.
The rest of the production is as lazy and elementary as the delivery of Just-Ice, which repeatedly attempts the reggae-raggamuffin crossover ("Girls N Guns", "Give Mi Pas", "That the Way I Feel", "Informer Fi Dead") without success. Rodriguez's production is as mediocre as Mantronik's one, same minimal rhythms, same drums. It's a really poor product, which is why big compliments should be made to the independent label Savage Records who managed to promote the album well and make it into the hip-hop album chart. As a final reflection, I just write that it's worrying that this guy wanted to make more records after "Masterpiece", one of the worst albums of 1990. 4/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment