Styles P

This is quintessential N.Y.C. hip-hop: hard drums and wistfully sad samples straining beneath hard-boiled tales of the rotten apple's black core. The anger and brutality of "F*ck the Police" and "Hard Out Here" are tempered with an unhealthy fatalism, and sometimes it feels as if most of the violence here is of the self-inflected variety. Styles has a gruff, plainspoken vocal style that isn't as rhythmic as that of some of his peers, but it serves him well here.