Ain't y'all mother******* s'posed to have beef?
Get at 'em dawg, what the **** is all this peace?
Show him all that **** you talked about on yo' CD
Show him that hammer you flashed out on yo' DVD
That same *****, that called yo' momma a bitch
Then called yo' wife a ho, yo, there that ***** go!
Stomp that mother******, blast that mother******
Stab that mother******, get at that mother******, yo
Hip-hop duo M.O.P. has never really hit the stratosphere and I think I can kind of tell why from this rather inconsistent album. The album has a really good five song run at one point. It starts with It’s Hard to Tell, which is one of the better hip-hop romance duets I’ve heard in a long time. Then Teflon shows up with a really grim track called Suicide; it’s got some really great lyrics and a nice abrupt ending. Hip Hop Cops features a siren based beat and a guest appearance by Wyclef Jean, not a guy I’m usually a big fan of, but he’s angrier hear than I think I’ve ever heard him before and the Hip Hop Cops of the title are people in the hip-hop community who try to judge other artists, so he really lets loose with a great diss verse on people who think he’s not a legit rapper. Then there’s a remix of ODB’s Pop Shots which is pretty good and then the run wraps up with Put It in the Air which features a fantastic, really menacing guest verse by Jay-Z. These guys are at their best when they’re being dark and menacing; and I gotta just say it, the best songs all feature guests who elevate things tremendously. Instigator is a really good track that comes in the back half of the album and it actually utilizes the vocal strengths of M.O.P. really well; those vocal strengths are, frankly, just being incredibly loud and aggressive. Instigator is in the person of a rapper egging on a friend to kick off some violence in the club and it is a hard-core pumped up rap song that has little in the way of artistry, but more than makes up for it in the sheer angry force of it. So, of course, you’re thinking I just said this record had six songs on it that range from good to great, so what’s the issue? Well, once again, they just overload this album and dilute those good songs with a lot of mediocre and even downright bad tracks. This album has seventeen tracks on it and, okay, yeah, two of them are skits, but still you put fifteen music tracks on your album, then no, six good ones is not enough. I was frankly just pretty tired of this album by the time I got toward the end and they pulled the bonus track trick by having, not one, but two bonus tracks on the record. And look, when you’re loving an album and you get to the end and it keeps going, there’s nothing quite as wonderful. But when you’re just tired of an album and ready for it to end and it gets to the end and then the songs just keep coming . . . man, nothing is more infuriating. So, on the whole, I can’t recommend this album, which is too bad, because that run of five songs especially in the middle of the record is damn good, I mean, damn good. But it’s surrounded by ten other tracks that are pretty mediocre. M.O.P.? I’d say M.O.R. Yeah, I’ve been saving that one. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – a third of this album is good to great, but the other two-thirds are pretty mediocre; make this one shorter and more focused and you’d have a really good album, but as it is, no. 2 ½ stars.