Sophomore jinx incredibly negative for Kwamé. The title refers to the rapper's penchant for wearing polka dots. In the author's idea, the album should be a concept album about "Bone Age". Each song beginning with a snippet of one of his answering machine messages. Also sinking the whole project is Kwamé's idea of giving up sampling, playing almost every instrument to build the tracks.
The production is made by the Brothers Grimmmm and by himself, with quite disappointing results: it's composed of a simple, minimal and lean skinny beat, sometimes obscure ("Skinee Muva"), jazzy ("Da' Man"), more energetic and frenetic ("Itz Oh Kay"), tight ("Doin' Ma Thang") and extravagant ("Whoz Dat Guy"), while the hooks don't help too much, when it goes well they're functional to tracks, when it goes bad they're pop lame and unplayable.
The lyrics are trivial and subdued compared to the debut and his rapping delivery is much lower than the debut, up to opting for singing in one of the worst cuts ("Doin Ma Thang"): his syncopated rapping is often light-hearted, acceptably mediocre at the beginning, becoming poor and weak towards the ending, sometimes lazy, weak and urgent, Kwamé is never inspired here and often chooses to return to an annoying female voice which, if used once is fine, if used every track starts to ruining the tracks.
"Different Strokes" by Syl Johnson is sampled twice (both "Owniee Eue", the latter is a decent instrumental track), without giving value to the songs. "Whoz Dat Guy" is one of the worst tunes of the record: minimal and extravagant raw beat, poor uninspired and lame delivery by the rapper, horrible extravagant chorus and in general, the beat is too annoying to be brought to the end.
Released by Atlantic, promoted by three single ("Ownlee Eue", "Oneovbabigboiz" and "Hai Love", the latter peaks #17 in the rap chart, while the others are third in the same chart) and by a North American tour, the album enters in the Billboard 200 and is welcomed by mixed review by specialized critics: this sophomore effort divides critics due to its clearly eccentric nature, between an unusual production style and an equally unusual rapping performance by Kwamé. While some reviewers show appreciation for the author's effort, others believe his project couldn't make its way into the busy hip-hop scene of the time, ending up as a barely adolescent disk. Bad album in my very humble and personal opinion.
Rating: 4/10.
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