X Clan — Xodus

Horrible fall for one of the most surprising hip-hop group of 1990. Typical sophomore jinx, the X Clan, Brooklyn group consisting of Brother J, Professor X, Paradise and Anthony Hardin, arrives two years after having published a semi-classic.

After the successes of Cube and Paris, here they try again a political effort, with socio-conscious and on the 5% bars scattered all over the disc, in addition to the light-hearted messages and the random bars of Professor X and excellent pro-black lyrics and against white culture. It would be an honest album if it weren't for the horrible production and very poor commercial choices: eleven songs, over fifty minutes of listening and most of the cuts are unlistenable and this fact is exhausting, all the tracks are over four minutes and some even surpasses five, making this LP really hard to pull off, especially due to horrible music.

The X Clan starts off badly from second zero on track one, with a baby crying, one of his most annoying and senseless sound that you can put on an album. Above is Brother J's quick spoken delivery that doesn't change style from the debut — and that's good — then there's a girl intro, skinny drum machine syncopated in the background, the group decides to perform on this annoying sound of a crying child: unlistenable tune, functional chorus, slow syncopated deliveries that inevitably lengthen and dilate the song, quite idiotic choice to open an album, their brains are completely gone.

The rhythms start to improve, sure, how could you have made a beat like that worse? It was almost impossible, completely impossible if you aren't a phenomenon like Swizz or DJ Khaled. Here comes the rain in "Cosmic Ark", intro, jazzy sample of sax that recalls the crying of the child from before — damn guys, really?! — equally annoying, therefore spoken intro, slow, minimal and poor syncopated skinny drum machine, cheap and annoying rhythm that the delivery of the group doesn't improve.

Track three, the only decent production of the whole project: poor and simple cheap beat, with slow syncopated skinny drum machine, spoken intro, slow syncopated delivery, functional hook, the beat would be decent thanks to a looped sax sample in the background, but it's rendered lazy on a lazy, almost mumble delivery.

The title track has a g-funk rhythm with synths, muddled beat, intro, then meager delivery on vibrant drum and ESG's shamefully useless "UFO" sample here in this West Coast filler/homage. The next piece presents an elementary, cheap and poor production, a lo-fi attempt, a weak cut.

"Fire & Earth" is the worst track on the record: incredibly annoying and irritating, stupid rhythm, with quick, skinny and syncopated drum machine, simple hook, slow syncopated delivery, horrible tight looped sample, homicide-suicide choice. Six and a half minutes of this absurdly annoying sound, and it's also one of the singles on the album, one of two singles. In the next two songs, the music doesn't improve and remains cheap, poor and weak; "Rhythem of God" is a fast-paced rap rock crossover attempt with lame ultra-fast urgent delivery, followed by two more sleepy mediocre cuts that last far too long.

Released by Polydor, distributed by PolyGram, with the subtitle "The New Testament", pushed by three singles ("Fire & Earth", "Xodus" and "A.D.A.M."), the disk enters Billboard 200, peaks #11 on the rap chart and becomes one of the best selling hip-hop albums of the season.

The meager variety of themes, lo-fi poor music choices and the fact that these poor and cheap beats are completely unfit with the rapping style performed by the rappers, make this album extremely disappointing and unnecessary. If you want to listen to X Clan go back to their only good album, the debut.

Rating: 3/10.