Sophomore jinx for Kris Kross, the duo who dominated the pop rap market in the early nineties. Their second effort flies to platinum, in the wake of the successful debut.
There are still Jermaine Dupri and Joe Nicolo to manage the production, which is better than the previous record, while the lyrics are again the work of Dupri, and are at least as scarce as those of the first album. The rhythms are cheap, simple, sparse, funky, decent especially in the second part, when they meet the cheerful, syncopated and partly smooth fit delivery of children. However, in the first part, the duo Nicolo-Dupri misses the first two rhythms: the one of the title track is unlivable, slow drum, girlish delivery and ridiculously annoying hook, while "Sound of My Hood" is even worse, the rhythm is more annoying of the previous one, I don't know how they did it here.
After this bad start, the record picks up, DJ Nabs comes out with a decent light funky instrumental ("DJ Nabs Break"), then the best songs arrive. "I'm Real" is a badly managed attempt to make a tense beat with simplistic instruments, a discreet but very lean sound comes out, which barely holds up to the cheerful delivery of the young. "Freak da Funk" has a good sample and an honest funky rhythm, while "Alright" is the best piece of the tape, from the musical point of view: single-banger with minimal g-funk rhythm, tight and frantic syncopated skinny drum machine, vibes light, cheery girlish syncopated delivery of the duo, then reggae guest Supercat arrives to give that festive twist on the hook and just the right commercial boost to the song. The Atlanta entrepreneur is so confident that he decides to stretch this song to six minutes in a sort of final remix (but the sound is the same). Mediocre pop rap product, but Dupri's courage was never lacking: produced by his Ruffhouse and by Sony (via Columbia Records), it's slightly better than the debut, still not recommended, 3.5/10.
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