the latest in a tradition of rappers – which includes Tupac and Scarface – who are short on MC skills but are geniuses at making themselves felt. Like Jay-Z and the late Notorious B.I.G., P represents the heart-having, conscience-racked but superdetermined street dealer – the sensitive hustler, the "Inside I'm crying" slanger. He cries
uunngh! for those already gone, for his war wounds, for his fatherless black self trapped in this white world. Saying that P can't rap is about as right as saying that Satchmo couldn't sing, Basquiat couldn't paint or Tupac couldn't flow. What they lacked in traditional skills was more than made up for in attitude and a connection with the audience so strong it was like cable. P may never actually flow, but you
will feel him.
And, like Bill Gates, you will pay him. At P's label, No Limit Records, they put 'em out as fast as their art department can design those covers. Whether you pick up Soulja Slim's Give It 2 'Em Raw or Fiend's There's One in Every Family or C-Murder's Life or Death, you're guaranteed to get twenty or so nuanceless songs drenched in the No Limit sound – a mix of West Coast G-funk, New Orleans bounce and Luke's Miami bass. It's that funeral funk: A gumbo of some 808 drum machines, some ominous notes, some gangster rhymes and P's wails, it all comes off like a soundtrack for a slightly campy Scream-era horror movie, and (except for the R&B outfit Sons of Funk's The Game of Funk) it all works perfectly as psych-up music for that testosterone-filled ride to the strip club, the weight room or the ball court.
Surfing them beats – sometimes on the beat, sometimes not – are those irrepressible No Limit soldiers: the aforementioned, as well as Silkk the Shocker, Kane and Abel, and the Full Metal Jacket sergeant turned MC, Mystikal ("I ain't the same old, same ordinary, everyday rap/Bitch, I killed Kenny/So I guess I'm that bastard"). There's also the lovely and unstoppable Mia X ("I'm the index finger on the trigger – don't move!/Whoops!/Saw ya blink ya eyes/Now you gon' make the news"). No serious hip-hop crew is complete without a woman who is (quietly) better than most of the guys.
Snoop Doggy Dogg, just recently paroled from Death Row Records and now signed to No Limit, pops up here and there throughout the catalog, with six new rhymes on P's album MP da Last Don and a song on the soundtrack for P's film I Got the Hook-Up! (Despite a slew of high-profile guests, Hook-Up! is forgettable excep
Down but not out, the once-mighty Master P makes another comeback bid. MP Da Last Don is exactly what fans have come to expect from the New Orleans rap mogul; it's a lengthy double-disc jam-packed with keyboard beats, crime-related wordplay, lots of big name guests and plenty of "uhhhhh"s. Snoop, E-40 and Bone Thugs also appear.
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