A few years back when Obie Trice dropped his first CD "Cheers" he made the mistake of following a bit to closely to Mentor Eminem's formula for success. He dropped a very cheesy lead single. I think he suffered some from it because people mostly overlooked how talented he really was. This time out Obie is not to be confused for his pale mentor. Obie brings it in that raw Detroit style almost from beginning to end on this one and more often then not he connects with full force!
after dropping the anti snitching song "Snitch" as his lead single he drops "cry now" as single number two and doesn't disappoint with lyrics like: "Hip-Hop's my fate, since cassette tapes I've embraced what you know of, as this nigga's culture Put it in a chokehold, spoke as a soldier (soldier)Yet you provoke him to pull up out his holster leave you wit a visible ulcer, ogle off yaNiggaz alter what he lyrically offers". Obie keeps it gutter on various tracks such as "Violent" and "kill me a mutha." Like Marshall Mathers Obie can switch flows with the best of them. On "out of state" he drops an almost frantic southern bounce flow over a "breezy drum heavy beat that sounds like it could be produced by Dr. Dre himself.
He can also take it to the club for those of people who like things like what with the Nate dogg assisted "all of my life" and his voice sets him apart from your typical club track. However where Obie truly shines is when he pours out his soul and lets the listener into his life. Luckily for us we get 3 tracks like that on this disc. "Mama" is a track about his mother, which he had onto he last CD but this is a much light, less bitter track but where he really gets the listener is the discs closing track entitled "Obie's story." He tells of his life up to this point and how he got where he got. This is the kind of hip-hop I love to listen to. Anyone can rap about guns and drugs but tell me something about you as a person and Obie is flawless when he lets us in and even better when he closes the disc with this: "Gotta end it though I'm all in it, there's no limits And it's so splendid real names, no gimmicks no image, just a soldier who spoke what he lived From the ribs with it, the flows vintage Obie gotta do this for real"
This is the best mainstream in the hip-hop genre of the year thus far. Not that that's a hard thing to be but Obie came back proving he is talented and proving he isn't just riding the coattails of Mr Slim Shady. In fact, Marshall rides in the back seat on this one. He produces a few tracks and they actually sound better than the average Shady produced track and he only raps on one track with some Xzibit soundalike named Big Herc.
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