not sure if that question was facetious, but i thought Jada’s verse was the highlight, there.

these 5 tracks are by far the weakest section of the album.

I think this album is getting the most varied reception I’ve seen since 808s. Cosign Thomas and……..Tray on Jada’s contribution to “Broken Safety”. To Thomas I’d say your nuts and that mini run from “Surgical Gloves” through “Canal Street” is the album’s finest. Rae ran back “Surgical Gloves” twice last night at the album release party and it was the most hype the crowd got for any song made after 97. I think it’s my favorite Alchemist beat since he flipped “Blinded me with Science”

I don’t know if it’s dickish to say this but I think the Dirt tribute is the album’s worst misstep. It’s a good song but for me it totally disrupts the gritty crack rap album Rae worked so hard to achieve. It’s stepping outside the narrative arc and kind of jarring for me.

Mr. Weiss, I think it’s just a function of our generally agreeing on what constitutes good classic New York rap, to which my last few comments have pertained, and not at all agreeing on, like, Rick Ross. I’d go so far as to say that Jada’s is one of the best verses on the album.

Have Mercy = Say Hey now by atmosphere. anybody else feel that way

Surgical Gloves is another beat on the album that I wasn’t blown away with. I was hoping that the production on this album was going to be more cohesive. There were so many great and very good producers in the mix, I thought “maybe they will change their sound a bit for the project at hand; go outside the box”. But nope.

I agree with the sore thumb thing. To me Alchemist shortchanged Chef, there are better beats on those Cutting Room Floor joints that Alchemist has put together.

Yeah, I think this album really missed having somebody making sure it stayed aesthetically cohesive. Surgical Gloves is a good song, but doesn’t really fit the rest of the album; the Dre songs are even worse in that regard. Compared to the Cuban Revolutions mixtape it sounds a lot more scattered. The high points on CL2 are clearly higher than anything on CR, but Memory Man did a great job keeping the world sonically consistent. Good beats aren’t enough to be a classic (not that too many other people are calling that, but I think it could have been that).

I think this extends to the rapping as well, and Brandon is right both about the Lox and Beanie not really belonging and Rae (and Ghost) not doing (them/)himself justice. This is a solid record with great moments that I think could have been great across the board, but was missing somebody to be Supreme Clientele-era RZA (and fuck is it sad that the RZA will probably never again be able to do that. Kung-Fu directing Funny Peopling Digi-Snacks Afro-Samurai’d Chamber-Musicing motherfucker is the definition of unfocused). The skits don’t push the record forward, they just sort of tick off the appropriate Wu boxes (notable exceptions being the “Langston” moment, “Pyrex Visions,” the end of “Gihad”). Something like the “blue and cream” bit, or the Meth/Rae interplay about the Killer tape, or “Woodrow the Basehead” could have lifted this further by filling out the Cuban Linx world-either by showing another dimension or by detailing it really thoroughly. The kung-fu stuff, as Sach alluded to earlier, doesn’t really go with the record, the Ghost shit at the start of Penitentiary is a kind of sad cliché.

Rae does some interesting shit on this record, but I wish somebody was pushing him a little more. He spits flames, sure, but they’re red where they need to be purple.

“Rae is not out to trick people with this album. we WANT to be tricked into feeling something, because that’s how you enjoy a good story. if anyone thought the first OB4CL was somebody’s memoirs, well, that’s just absurd.”

Yeah. It’s funny how people are willing to accept over the top street tales from a 25 year old, but not a 40 year old. What’s the difference? What happened to creative liscence? I’m not saying that Rae isn’t a street dude. But anyone that thinks everything him & Ghost were spitting on the original Cuban Linx was word for word real is an idiot. Mabey it was stuff they heard about second hand, some may have been made up completely, and some they may have actually lived through. I don’t see how the source of inspiration can detract from the listening experience though. With all due respect, Brandon’s review seemed a little weak to me. Sounds like he just doesn’t like it. Which makes alot more sense than the “these guys are almost 40″ argument.

Haters gotta hate, b.

Sach: Agreed. I love a lot of this album. It’s fun both to listen to and to wrestle with. The close-reading shit is appreciated.

“On the last Noisemakers with Peter Rosenberg he asked Rae why he shouted out Conneticut on “Incarcerated Scarfaces”. Rae responded by saying “I felt like I just needed a state right there”.”

Nuggets like these make reading blog comments worthwhile. That might be my favorite moment on the album. Just to give Jeff something to disagree about or groan over, a quasi-similar line (to the Bill Clinton line quoted above) that I’ve always loved since I’ve heard it is Master P’s “Bill Clinton be the President/but bitch I don’t care about that, I’m on the corner trying to represent!”