REVIEW: Xzibit - Weapons of Mass Destruction - 2004

I know I'm coming late to this party, and I have not had the experience of watching Pimp My Ride, but I recently purchased this disc from my local Rhino Records.

I like the production on this album. I like the minimal instrumentation/samples. Most tracks have a good solid beat and not a bunch of nonsense.

Xzibit has a really poetic way about him. He says profound things with conviction and intensity. There are only about 3 lines on the album where he says something I consider silly. I think at one point he says that he's "build Ford tough." In Ride or Die he speaks of "real gangsters" and how they don't say they're going to shoot you, they just "hit the trunk, cock it and spray it" then he says, "Light up your Christmas" which sounds silly. I don't know what Christmas has to do with it.

The "Steady Gang" of Strong Arm Steady does a great job of supporting him and they provide a welcome variety to the tracks.

My top 3 favorite tracks on the album are Beware of Us, Ride or Die and Tough Guy which features Busta Rhymes. When you listen to Tough Guy be sure and start with track 12, Big Barking which is the intro to the song. It makes the conclusion make sense. These tracks have catchy, melodic choruses that are fun to sing along with.

Honorable mention goes to Crazy Ho, which does not feature X to the Zizzle himself, but provides some comic relief to the otherwise serious and heavy subject matter.

Other favorite tracks include LAX, Criminal Set, and Saturday Night Live.

Least favorite tracks are Cold World, mostly due to the bad synchronization of the bass and drums, and the album's first single, Hey Now (Mean Muggin) as it moves away from the simplicity of the other tracks, overdoing it with the samples and production. Plus the chorus is not very catchy.

Overall it is a very listenable album and, except for when my 6-year-old is in the car, it's the only CD I have put on for the last two months.

Great job, Alvin Joiner.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OPINION: What Would Bernie Do?

In the last two days a small transformation has taken place. I have been reading a lot of public commentary on the American presidential primaries. I've seen a lot of people get really mad at each other for their opinions. I wrote some of my best stuff on a Bernie Sanders thread that seems to have been since deleted. It's a shame, because I wanted to copy my wise words and paste them here. What I learned from that exchange, and my passion for my responses, was that keeping calm and not descending into insults and blaming leads to much clearer, truer statements. Also, when I remove much of my opinion from it and stick to facts what I say has a lot more power. I have often read over things I have written, sometimes years ago, and I find myself cringing at some of the things I chose to write. There may be a few nuggets of wisdom in there, but I typically don't even finish the sentence of truth before I've gone and added something that makes my face and palm meet. I
Read more

Music 104B Final Project

Image
David Coutant 12 October 2016 The Echo (Los Angeles) Poster Children / State to State / Batwings Catwings Instrumentation used: two guitars, bass, drums (supplemented with drum machine) and vocals. The first band, Batwings Catwings played simple 4/4 and 6/8 rhythms with a lot of barre chords and power. The guitars both played lead, sometimes taking turns doing solos, sometimes playing dual leads a la the Allman Brothers Band. Guitarists Ray Santillan III and Jeffrey Byron play Rickenbacker and Fender guitars with a distorted rock sound. Bassist Cindy Sukrattanawong played a Precision Bass, and she had a solid, clean sound. Drummer Clay Johnson, who formed the band in 2009, plays a standard acoustic kit of probably 7 pieces. The music was high-energy and precise. The vocals of lead singer Dana Poblete were less precise, but she sounded good for the music. The second band of the night was local group State to State. They opened with a swirly, ambient sound that became the song
Read more

The Back Room

I've got a building bug. The success of the chair has given me a certain amount of confidence in my ability to achieve a goal that I've set for myself. Those square pieces of wood were stacked in that back room for months, just sitting there, mocking me, saying, "you don't know what to do with us. You're going to screw it all up. You don't even know the first step of making a chair." And they were partially right. But it turns out I DO know the first step of making a chair, or making anything, and the first thing you make is a plan. Damn, starting to get clever again. Since I really like my chair, despite its flaws, I'm excited about my next big project, which is to enclose the back porch. Now, there was once a patio off of the dining room and hallway, and that had a roof over it, and many years ago somebody enclosed it. I'm not entirely sure how they did it, but it's got painted plywood on the outside and fake-wood paneling on the in
Read more