Clipse - Fast Life

Take two of the most talented rappers in Hip-Hop who, feeling shunned by the prodigious talent that gave them what may be the best album of 2006, tag Scott 'Why the fuck did I waste all my money' Storch to produce their big street single and what you get is Fast Life, a tacky affair in which Storch proves once again that he learned absolutely nothing under Dre. The beat, yet another cheesy take on the cheap-means-simple ethos so many producers seem to ascribe to, totters along with all the imagination of, well, a Scott Storch beat. You'd think after spending so much time under ?uestlove and Dre, the two biggest perfectionists in Hip-Hop, he'd learn to mix a nice-sounding drum track every now and then. It's not so much that Pusha and Malice themselves are the problem here. It's not like they're risking the alienation of fans by rapping about anything other than coke. I'm just disappointed that their musical future without The Neptunes seems doomed to D-Block status.

Swing and a fucking miss.

G-Unit - Terminate on Sight

Does 50 Cent love Hip-Hop? Has he ever loved Hip-Hop? Judging from the countless mixtapes G-Unit have released over the years it seems pretty likely. Hilarious skits, a more-than-passing familiarity with the roots of New York Hip-Hop and, most importantly, great songs fill tapes such as 50 Cent is the Future, God's Plan and the surprising trilogy of Thisis50.com tapes. So they love Hip-Hop. Why has it never translated over to the commercially released Interscope/G-Unit/Aftermath records? Since 2003 50, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo have plumbed the depths of Dr. Dre's gangsta rap blueprint, ignoring the harsh irony of N.W.A. and the playfulness that punctuated Doggystyle for the stark 'reality' that lay on the surface of these records. 5 years on and it's evident that without the nuance and complexity of Dr. Dre's classic work, G-Unit has nothing.

Terminate On Sight is the latest in a long line of 50 Cent related records that pushes the formula established by Get Rich Or Die Trying to it's breaking point. The music echoes with Dre's far reaching influence although neither he nor any Aftermath producer has any obvious input. The album opens with 'Straight Outta Southside', the most obvious homage to G-Unit's roots to date. References to Sean Bell, gun-play and expensive liquor abound with none of the self-conscious commentary that made the original an enduring song. Lloyd Banks sounds bored. Tony Yayo sounds animated. 50 Cent sounds off-beat. Nothing much changes in G-Unit's world, it seems. The album moves along quickly with a host of Dre soundalikes (Piano Man), Timbaland soundalikes (I Don't Want to Talk About It) and, surprisingly, more Dre soundalikes (everything else). Curtis Jackson the businessman strikes again, employing a host of small-time producers who, despite their talent, churn out rough approximations of popular sounds. Unfortunately it seems this time around nobody's fooled. The singles languish in the depths of the Billboard Hot 100 and it seems, much like 2007's Curtis, that Terminate on Sight is doomed to a short life.

So what went wrong? Jackson's extreme cost-cutting measures and abuse of the gangsta rap blueprint to within an inch of it's life seem to be the main culprits in Terminate on Sight's spectacularly boring failure. G-Unit now sound like throwaway copies of themselves, rehashing the same topics over the same beats with the same style. The cover shot says it all with a highly stylized and extensively photoshopped Unit committing a false crime in a fake environment. No matter how much 50 blusters, bullshits or threatens, the public has moved on and G-Unit has been left catering to a demographic that no longer exists.