Third album for the gangsta pioneer Ice-T. During the tour preceding this album, the rapper is censored and forced to revise his lyrics excluding dirty words and obscenities. The answer comes with this record.
It's powerful, it's more powerful than "Power", Ice-T puts all his technical-lyrical repertoire in this heavy, fun and violent effort, one of the best in gangsta rap. The funky production of Afrika Islam is accurate, fresh, raw, and fully supports the smoothness and hardcore rapping of Ice-T, which destroys everything it encounters in the first part by dropping conscious, social, political and braggadocio themes, putting aside ignorant lyrics and going straight against the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) founded and led by Tipper Gore.
In the second part, the quality of the album drops to the low point "What Ya Wanna Do?", posse party with a dozens of guests including Everlast (House of Pain): the length of this track is about ten minutes and most guests pull out pretty weak if not ridiculous bars. That cat-rat ish pulled out by Donald D has gone down in history, trivially makes you laugh as lyrically as it seems to have come out of a first-grade child (rejected, by the way), but the boy will drop a prophetic reference in "Word Is Bond": "Yo Ice, I did a concert in the White House / And after that me and Donald Trump hung out".
Praised by critics, launched by three singles ("Lethal Weapon", "What Ya Wanna Do?","You Played Yourself"), the LP is released by Sire Records and Rhyme $yndicate Records, distributed by Warner Bros. Records for the market of five continents, making its way in the charts and being certified gold in US and Canada.
Opened by Jello Biafra of Black Sabbath, overall, it's a coherent and great album, with an excellent fun rapping and there are few weak points (the rap rock of "The Girl Tried to Kill Me" is the other one), Ice-T delivers with a velvet and dope flow, offering one of his best performances and building one of the first gangsta albums, one of the best on the West Coast in the eighties and one of the roughest.
Highlights: "Lethal Weapon", "You Played Yourself", "Peel Their Caps Back".
Rating: 8.2/10.
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