Cam'ron

Purple Haze takes the gangsta mindset to its hyper-masculine logical conclusion, inadvertently uprooting any connection the music may have to reality and placing it squarely in the realm of ghetto fantasy. Crack anthems such as "More Gangsta Music" and "The Dope Man" can't -- and shouldn't be -- taken too seriously, which makes them comfort food for laptop hustlas.

Musicality covers over only so much gunrunning and sexual exploitation, though more than I would have figured ("Girls," "Get Down"). (Grade - *)