M.O.P.

After a dedicated career that earned them massive street cred but surprisingly limited commercial success, Brooklyn's M.O.P. finally crash the mainstream's party with their fifth album. Their high-octane, extra rowdy steez scored with singles like "Ante Up" and "Cold As Ice," introducing Billy and Fame to the sleeping masses. Premier produces five tracks.

Lil' fame and Billy Danzenie, of the Brownsville, Brooklyn, duo MOP., have been drum
majors of hip-hop ruggedness since they asked the pointed question, "How 'bout some
hardcore?" on their inaugural single, in 1993. On Warriorz, they continue mixing
assault-and-battery vocals with head-rattling beats like they were the love child of DMX and
Limp Bizkit throwing a temper tantrum. The subject matter here doesn't stray far... More >

Ooh, Eminem, scary. You want a rap record to terrify your ass, how about one with a street anthem about robbing n*gg*z? Socially redeeming characteristic: will discourage young African American men from wearing jewelry. Billy Danze is the coarse-grained DMX bellower with the crazy laugh, Lil' Fame his rugged sidekick. Wielding brazen, unrelenting samples, they attack like a firing squad on a spree, with a fierce joy Guns N' Roses would abjure hard drugs for. As is no secret, I hate gangsta rap-hate its smugness, its brutality, its cool, its lies, its contempt for the ordinary, its failure to provide role models for young African American men. But this specimen convinces me that, sometimes, thugs have more fun-get large in the ways that matter by sh*tting on anybody they f*cking feel like. I scoff at "guilty pleasures," too. Pleasure is nothing to feel guilty about. This may be. (Grade - A-)