Word: rapped
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...span of time for a hip-hop group to stay popular, and the reasons De La Soul has carried it off are loud and clear on its sixth album. The lyrics are funny but humane, the beats fresh and surprising. The high point comes when Slick Rick, one of rap's best dirty storytellers, weds his sleaze appeal to the group's nerdy humor and stuffs a Ben Stiller movie's worth of innuendo into a 5-min. track. The crackling originality that producer Prince Paul brought to the group's early work is sorely missed, but may they keep...
...hard rock / and mix it with hip hop,” Rock rhymes, repeating the refrain to mix in punk rock, southern rock and surf rock. The result is as tedious as the lyrics that announce it: an anthology for the angry, including punk, hard metal and nasty-boy rap. Rather than fusing these elements into something new, Rock takes the most obvious attributes of each and throws them together...
...guitar solos are standard and the rap is weak, obscene with the thinness of 2 Live Crew but without the authenticity—what one expects from someone whose first big single, “Bawitdaba” thrived on little more than a copped and garbled Slick Rick lyric set to heavy metal. Kid Rock spends the better part of the album repeating the image of the American bad ass in his rock/hip-hop style: dirty-mouthed, abusive, drunk, drugged and not giving a damn...
Even in these country clichés, however, he stops, mocks the attempt at sentiment, and falls backs into nasty rap and screaming guitars. A few guest appearances keep the album interesting. Snoop Dogg and Rock do a misogynistic duo on the last track, and Sheryl Crow joins Rock for a coked-out modern take on the your-cheating-heart standard...
...what separates The Wash from other rap soundtracks isn’t that the big stars deliver, it’s that the relative unknowns hold their own. Toi, who sang the hook on Ice Cube’s “You Can Do It,” proves her solo worth with two R&B tracks. Even Knoc-turn’al, who made two mediocre appearances on Dre’s 2001 album, single-handedly holds together the otherwise tired beat of “Str8 West Coast.” At long last, there...