It kind of surprises me that this doesn't have a better rep. While it took a bit of time to grow on me, there is very little here I don't find to be pretty damn good. The young black male, Pac, spits some great conscious/political lyrics, and the beats, while not brilliant, all work quite well. Sample heavy/radio friendly production like 'Rebel of the Underground', original dark tracks like 'Soulja's Story', and rawer beats like 'Trapped' offer a mixture in the production. While future albums such as 'Me Against the World' would surpass this, and Pac would become a bigger than Jesus figure in the world of rap, this is a good place to begin if you haven't checked out 2pac's discography as of yet. Underrated. Beats: ★★★★ Rapping/Bars: ★★★★★ Best Tracks: Trapped, Soulja's Story, I Don't Give a Fuck, If My Homie Calls, Brenda's Got a Baby, Part Time Mutha

This begins well with the singles being etched in my brain from many years ago. Two of the first three songs reminds you how good Scott Storch was. While 'Baby Boy' doesn't match the quality of the first two songs, 'Hip Hop Star' is forgettable and the first real problem. From there it gets less hip hop influenced and more towards general contemporary R&B ballads. 'Be With You' that borrows heavily from Bootsy Collins''I'd Rather Be With You' and 'Me, Myself and I' are good songs. 'Yes' goes nowhere. 'Signs' production and the way she sings is fine but the astrology lyrical BS makes it hard to take seriously. I hope she doesn't really believe it. It happens again, but with fewer astrology references in 'Gift From Virgo'. 'Speechless' is another slow one but feels a 'lil more vibey and musically interesting with some nice vocals. To end the album, 'Daddy' gets Freudian, - "I want my husband to be like my daddy..." The build-up and music is good but lyrically I find it odd. A front-loaded album with the four singles featured within the first six songs and there is nothing after 'Speechless' worth checking for. Beats: ★★☆ Vocals/Bars: ★★★ Hooks: ★★☆ Best Tracks: Crazy in Love, Naughty Girl, Me, Myself and I

I was looking at Fergie's wkipedia page and the amount of copies this and the associated singles sold is incredible. This moved 8 million units worldwide and her singles went gangbusters as well. Then I thought with the success of this, why wouldn't you put out another album ASAP, but I guess she could live off it, if all the BEP success wasn't enough. Anyway, did this deserve the commercial success? Probably not. I remember some of these singles when they were released six years ago. I never liked 'Fergalicious', but it does have a catchy tune and doesn't seem quite as bad today, and 'Glamorous' is one I've always got some enjoyment out of. Vocally Fergie reminds me of Mariah at times, although she obviously doesn't have the range in her pipes. While this isn't as bad as some people make it out to be, at the same time there are some annoying songs I hate, and the production isn't really my type of thing more often than not. Best Tracks: Glamorous, Velet, Big Girls Don't Cry

Before I rated this album today the only 0.5/5 I had given is to a Crazy Frog album and lets face it, if anything deserves a 0.5/5 that does. While I have never been a big fan of the Black Eyed Peas, in a way they always had some pop rap tracks that were a guilty pleasure with catchy tunes. 'The Energy Never Dies' though just has nothing remotely interesting. Even on the bonus disc the remixes apart from maybe 'Shut the Phunk Up' with George Clinton's Knee Deep sample there is nothing there either. Each album of the BEP's had been quite different moving more toward mainstream pop music and away from hip hop but this is more than I thought they would change. Lyrically it's generic also and lacks anything with substance. Some will love the change, some will hate.

Lil Wayne has cumulatively been getting worse and worse over a number of years now, and you'd think that this has to be the tipping point as much of this is purely unlistenable. Whether it be song ruining features, or his own projects over the last few years, every second bar seems to be some corny punchline or sex metaphor that has gotten to the point of being incredibly annoying and/or terrible. Just to give you an example, this is the kind of stuff we're dealing with on the hook of 'Wowzers' - "My dick is a AK/My tongue go BDDDDDDD." When I started playing the album, I thought to myself, I wonder how long it will take for Wayne to rap about sex, and bang, just as I finished the thought, there it was. He has always kind of been obsessed with it, but it seems that it has continued to snowball, as he has either become lazy, or ran out of things to rap about. If anyone has written a rap or freestyled, they'd know that sex is really the simplest thing to spit about, however, there really aren't that many places to go with it. The song titles on this album are just there a lot of the time to differentiate between the tracks, as once you get into them, lyrically there is very little distinction present. Even on the cloud rappy 'God Bless Amerika' where it seems like Wayne is kind of getting deep in the first verse, he kicks of the second with: "Back to life back to reality/been eating my girl and she so sweet, got cavities"... He can't help himself and this isn't even an original line. And other lines in that verse just show he ran out of anything with substance to say fairly quickly The production is solid for the most part. Some beats bang and got me tapping my toes or moving my hand up and down with the beat, but as mentioned with the lyrics being terrible, not to mention some bad use of autotune, Wayne makes it hard to enjoy them. If you love the way Wayne raps, maybe you will still enjoy this, but I don't think that I would even be able to enjoy listening to my favourite rappers like Nas, Scarface, T-Rock, Cube, and so on, if this is the repetitive lyrical performance, to put it kindly, that they brought to the table. I'd only recommend this to big stans/fans of Tunechi. I really hope that this doesn't do the numbers that Wayne's projects normal do, with fans waking up to Wayne's garbage, and Wayne then realising that what he has been making since 'Like Father Like Son' in my opinion, and probably since 'Tha Carter 3/4' in most people's opinion, has been mostly dreadful music. Best Tracks: Days and Days, Gunwalk, God Bless Amerika