For his ninth LP, Fat Joe deals with Capitol Records still tied with Caroline Records/EMI, nevertheless, his effort is delayed several times due to a lack of promotion, according the same emcee. The production credits DJ Infamous, RonBrowz, The Inkredibles, Rico Love, Earl & E, Schife & OhZee, Eric Hudson, Jim Jonsin, T-Weed, Andrews "Drew" Correa, G-Bi, Laurent "Slick" Cohen and DJ J-Buttah. The guests are Lil' Kim, Chef Raekwon, Lil Wayne, Ron Browz, Akon, Pleasure P, Rico Love, T-Pain, OZ, TA, Benisour, Swizz Baetz, Rob Cash of KAR and Cherlise.
Ohhhhhhh yeah, he tried. Joe still wanted that platinum at any cost, even to name his new album with the same title as the only platinum he had obtained in his career ("Jealous Ones Still Envy", 2001) and adapt himself to the mainstream trends of the time, even if it consists of making an entire LP with autotune in the 2009.
As other reviewers have already reiterated before me, there are no positive aspects even to want to look seriously for. "Joey Don't Do It", produced by DJ Infamous, has a good ascending beat and decent delivery by Joe, even with a functional hook, but it's listenable as one of the few non-autotune tracks on the record. Same speech for "Ice Cream", there's Raekwon but it's as if he wasn't there. But these tracks are few exceptions.
The rest's vague, it's confusing. There're just sounds, sounds disparate in the ether. Starting with "Winding on Me", where Ron Browz provides a dystopian production à la "Runner Blade" and a hook poor, while Weezy's verse's helped by the autotune. "In One" (ft. Akon on the chorus), you understand that even Joe doesn't knows why he's doing it, dropping two desolate verses. The beat wouldn't be bad either, but the autotune's really unlistenable, totally ruining the piece.
In "Aloha" we stay on the autotune that we like so much, Joe at one of his worst verse in his career, easily skippable. Still autotune with T-Pain, it'd have been interesting to hear Joe and him in a collab without this autotune. Eric Hudson realized a light boom bap for "Congratulations" (Rico Love on the chorus), I don't understand what TA does, but it does badly; choice that makes you REGRET that thing of autotune.
The second part of the Fat Joe album, usually it's the best one, [is] the one where the album gets back up and it's almost decent to listen to. But no. Not here. Jim Jonsin creates a digitized beat, some random moans of Lil' Kim in the middle of the song and verse dropped with the help of autotune by the former Junior M.A.F.I.A. member. Other track necessary to skip, like the next, "Cupcake", with a badly synthesized rhythm. Then "Ice Cream" & "Okay Okay" (beat fouled by dance/club elements...), and "Blackout" (production heavy and fatty, Swizz on the hook) before "Music", a gospel tune where Joe said "Yeah, man I did it for the music! I did it for the love". Man what? Ahahahahahah.
Promoted by two singles that stop almost immediately without making much headway in the charts, the album distributed by Koch Records sells around eight thousand of physical copies in its first week (20.000 copies in US market by summer 2010), entering the top ten of rnb albums, but becoming the worst-performing disk of Fat Joe in the chart since his first album released in 1993.
Scary autotuned album, it's not something does for Fat Joe. Unquestionably dud result. It's his worst album ever. It seems a mockery of 2009 hip hop scene. Production is poor and cheap, often wrong in a unbelievable way, lyrics trivial to make a compliment, it's all poorly conceived to pursue that platinum. To paraphrase the author Noixe in his review of "Fantastic Vol. 2" by the Slum Village for RapReviews: «When Swizz Beatz drops the best verse on your album, you got some problems.»
Rating: 3/10.
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