This finishes quite well from the nice 'Celebration' with Frédéric Mercier's 'Spirit' sample, which was also used on Jay's Blueprint 3, and from there there are some good tracks, but the beginning of the album features nothing too outstanding. It lacks from not having enough dope beats and containing a few wack hooks such as on 'Sky' and 'Free' which I'm not feeling a lot. Nothing is bad, but there ain't enough I'm loving.
Best Tracks: Celebration, Coming From, Murda
These guys were featured on a number of video games back in the day and that was how I was introduced to them. 'Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX' had a great soundtrack that included 'Great Expectations' and once I heard that I had to hear more so I purchased this album. I'm not going to go on about it too long, it's just a fresh sounding underground album with dope rappers trading bars. If there is one criticism I have it is that apart from Chali 2na they don't sound that different from each other. I've said that many times with hip hop groups.
Beats: ★★★★
Bars: ★★★★☆
Hooks: ★★★☆
Best Tracks: The Influence, Great Expectations, World of Entertainment, Contribution, Swing Set
The only tracks that offer any enjoyment are mentioned below. Overall though, with plenty of average beats, Mike's poor lyrics and ad-libs, it all makes for a very poor album as the rating suggests.
Best Tracks: Drop & Gimme 50, Give Me a Call, Swagger Right, Next to You
Only half of the album has anything to do with X-Mas and these tracks are more of R&Bish/pop rap, and then the remaining tracks are more of what you're used too. Not a bad album, and I probably enjoyed the first X-mas half more so than the rest, but nothing outstanding.
Chapter 4: Labor Pains starts off fairly well with some good tunes mentioned below, but from the 'Interlude' at track seven, every track afterwards struggles to evoke any enjoyment out me. Production wise and from a vocally building up perspective from Syleena, a lot of it is fairly boring. It finishes with an upbeat track in 'Go' after many slow tempo tracks but that also doesn't succeed greatly.
Best Tracks: Labour Pains, Where's the Love, Freedom, Be Me.