In 1993, Tweedy Bird Loc sought to make history, attempting to unite the street gangs Bloods & Crips into a 71-minute, 18-track album, aided by his producer Ronnie Marlon Phillips. The beats, made by Phillips, George & Darrell, J. Stank, Jerome Evans, QLuso and DJ Battlecat, are simplistic, funky boom bap, tight drum, functional hooks, some random jazzy samples, under typical gangsta bars: there are almost twenty different performers, you can't tell one from the other and it seems like the whole album is rapped by a handful of people, because they all sound the same.
The project was born with the intent to pacify the two factions in theory, but it sounds the opposite way, for each CK there's a BK, for each Red Rag there's a Blue Rag, and so on: most of the verses hit the opposite gang, so no, Bird Loc doesn't manages to make history. The album ends up being excessively long, bloated and mediocre amidst the saturated gangsta scene of the early nineties. While production can sometimes save the tracks, none of these spitters do anything to make themselves stand out. The album manages to get good sales, reaching the top of Billboard and the top 20 among rap albums.
Side note, among the most present performers: Richard Johnson (Tweedy Bird Loc aka BK), James Carter (Lil Leak aka CK), Larry White (Blue Rag), DeJaun Blackburn (Sin), Samari Doby (Lil' Stretch), Wytony Dillon (Red Rag), and Jermaine Carter (Red Rum 781).
Highlights: "Bangin' On Wax", "Rip a Crab in Half", "Steady Dippin'".
Rating: 6/10.
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