With all the big name artists that release records it's generally someone you've never heard of that you enjoy more, and this is an example of that. I find this album to be a hour of consistency, which probably as another review mentions contains some of the best stuff towards its conclusion. There are some interesting and original tracks where Blacastan talks about life from the point of view of a dice in 'The Dice Life', and the life of a cassette tape in 'The Life of a Tape' which lyrically is something fairly different and similar to what Nas did with 'I Gave You Power' on It Was Written where he spoke about life from the point of view of a gun. Tracks such as 'Best That I Can' and 'How Can You Be So Sure' are among the best and feature a nice contrast between the hard beats and lyrics compared to the emotionally sung hooks. The only real negative for me are that there is too much of the same sound throughout the album, which isn't a surprise as it is mostly produced by one producer in ColomBeyond. Best Tracks: Crate Diggaz, Best That I Can, Returnin' to Nam, Diamond, Anything Less, How Can You Be So Sure, Crac House, The Life of a Tape, The Real (Remix)

As with Big Geminii's label-mate Blast's debut, 'Unexpected', released one to two years ago (man time flies...) I enjoy this. On the beats, there is good variety with a mixture of pop rap, harder southern hip hop beats and more slower melodic beats. Topically, it's a similar situation: some brag rap about having plenty of dead presidents, some chick tracks such as 'Amazing' and 'Hypnotized' and then toward the end it's gets a tad deeper and introspective about correcting past wrongs, making good of what little time we have and so on. There is nothing too brilliant and I could see people calling much of these generic crap, but it features enough of a good mixture of beats and BG is enjoyable enough to listen too over them. The only really high quality track though is 'Get It Get It' which is a certified banger, which lets it down. Best Tracks: Get It Get It, Blow Me Away, Stay Real, Dallas, Might Live On, Time to Stack a Million

The production bangs on songs like 'Do You' and 'Is That You'. The hook is catchy on songs like 'Big Dreams' and 'Fresh Azimiz'. 'Let Me Hold You' and 'Like You' are good pop rap. It falls away fairly considerably in the second half making for a front loaded album, but it's a decent pop rap project with some worthy production. Best Tracks: Do You, Fresh Azimiz, Let Me Hold You, Like You, When I Turn 18 (Hidden Track)

I actually liked most of his previous LP 'Wanted' because I liked the production on it, but these beats ain't as much to my liking here. The harder, straight rap songs don't work as well, with the pop rap being the songs with a greater success rate. There is still some reasonable stuff here though. It's cool to hate Bow Wow but it's not that bad. Best Tracks: Shortie Like Mine, Tell Me, Give It to You, I'mma Flirt

EMPD are one of the best hip hop groups ever and it was great to hear they were reuniting for another album and putting their differences aside. I don't mind this album at all, its enjoyable to listen to, fairly consistent and with its 40 minute duration is quite easy to play from track 1 to 13 like most of their albums. The problem is though, if you've heard past EPMD or Erick Sermon's solo work, you may have felt you've heard it all before. Not bad but it probably won't have a huge amount of replay value due to its similarity with their previous work. Best Tracks: Puttin' Work In, Roc-Da-Spot, Run It, Bac Stabbers, Never Defeat Em, They Tell Me