This CD is raw. And the movie is awfully raw....
Considering the slant upon which rap and black culture has taken in these seven years since this album was released (and the movie for which it was made...) it doesn't surprise me that this record still hangs in my mind as the best of its genre. Almost every song on it remains a classic-- thoough some of the more positive R & B numbers that are there could stand to be stripped....
Taken for what it is, a frank and dark look at culture, this is as good as it gets. If you're newer to hiphop but wandering what exactly was going on in the early ninties, get this disc and listen to what Guru, Too $hort, Ant Banks and the rest of them were doing before rap became about Eminem's "homosexuals and Vicodin" or the rests champagne and big screen TVs....
This is sorta like the Louis-Ferdinand Celine version of rap music....