A solid album to all but finish off the year, and while I'm not a massive fan of Common, he is an artist who I still need to check out when he drops something fresh. First of all, I think that this album could have flowed better by not containing Maya's poem at the end of the opening track. It loses the heat created by the dope first 4 minutes of the album. It is a similar situation for the album closer 'Pops Belief'. I'm not going to listen to five minutes of someone talking more than once, especially when it's someone unknown, and when the beat doesn't do anything either. Nevertheless, the first couple of tracks are standouts. Like 'Ghetto Dreams' 'Sweet' is a near banger, but I don't think some of the lyrics and anger Common spits with suit him. I mean, he ain't exactly DMX. At track eight, 'Cloth' is another favourite, the production, verses and chorus all bond well forming a great R&B/rap tune. As far as Common albums go, I'd rank this one pretty high. There may not be the brilliance of his other albums, but it's more concise, the weaker tracks on other albums are weaker than the stuff I may not listen to over and over on this, and the production across the eleven tracks is consistent. Best Tracks: The Dreamer, Ghetto Dreams, Cloth, Celebrate, The Believer

I wanted to like this. I love the first track that I heard it on Tony Hawk's Underground and it made me want the album and led to high expectations. But the production doesn't do it for me at all on most of the songs.

A borderline 4/5 as there aren't enough if any songs that I truly love on this to 4 it. I do enjoy it more than most if not all Jay-Z albums though. The main reason for this is that it contains the most enjoyable beats from the beginning to the end out of his discography. Not all are great but I enjoy enough enough to rate this highly. Not that it's ever been a strength compared to the best of them, lyrically and topically this wouldn't be his greatest as it's mostly brag rap, and the retirement talk of course ended up being bullshit, but I've never loved Jay's style on the microphone so the production is always my main interest and focus when listening to him. I feel though this album could have been slightly improved. For example, remove/reduce his mum on 'December 4th' which would improve the flow of the track, 'Encore' is good but I enjoy the harder version Jay and LP did, remove/dub down Cedric the Entertainer on 'Threat' and lastly, a few less samples during the song 'Lucifer' - I like Kanye who produced it, but he can really overdo the sampling sometimes. Just on 'Threat', it is a song that I used to love, but overtime it has dropped a level or two. Overall though, for me from an artist with a fairly overrated discography and legacy, this is the Jay-Z album I feel flows on the best from track to track without anything that is poor making it arguable his most consistently enjoyable release. Best Tracks: Encore, Threat, Moment of Clarity

Four songs stand out on this album and will probably be ones that you will want to play a few times (see below). 'Word' is worth mentioning with its ol' school feel to it which many long term fans of the genre should enjoy. While nothing is bad, everything else makes this album a fairly standard west coast gangsta rap affair. C-Bo goes missing at times also with many guest appearances in the middle for the album. Best Tracks: If U a Gee, Ball 4 a Livin', On Top, Word.

Is this a classic? Maybe not, but it is a fun hip hop record and one which really doesn't deserve to be hated on and one that every time I play I enjoy more and more. While Shaq has a fairly basic flow he spits some comedic lines which add to that fun factor mentioned earlier. The featured rappers are nice also which this album no doubt needed, and the beats are funky from Erick Sermon (who handles four of the ten tracks), with Def Jef, Meech Wells, K-Cut and Ali Shaheed Muhammad who is of course a member from A Tribe Called Quest doing the rest of the work. It's always a joy to hear a few of the best from this. Best Tracks: (I Know I Got) Skillz, I'm Outstanding, I Hate to Brag, Shoot Pass Slam, Boom