Rating:
Genre:
Rap
Release Date: 02/24/2009
After 17 years in the rap game as the lead lyricist of one of the West Coast's most recognizable crews,
Cypress Hill,
B-Real shows new life on his debut solo album,
Smoke and Mirrors. Opening with a
"Stylistics" sample given the chipmunk soul treatment, the nasal-voiced lyricist promptly falls into his familiar flow, contrasting the trials and tribulations of the streets with the up-and-downs of show biz success on the title track. Though
DJ Muggs is conspicuously absent behind the boards, the production on
Smoke and Mirrors is consistently up to par; its 15 tracks conveying nothing but that quintessential California gangstafied funk. The
Soopafly-produced
"Gangsta Music" is '70s blaxploitation funk reincarnated as 2000s G-Funk. On the head-nod anthem
"Don't Ya Dare Laugh," yet another track whose hook borrows from
Suzanne Vega's
"Tom's Diner," B and company define Cali as "the home of marijuana" where "streets get hotter than a sauna." And
Muggs' prodigy,
the Alchemist provides the record's highlight with
"6 Minutes," a seething funk-guitar driven track that allows
B to compose a cynical treatise on contemporary hip-hop upstarts. Of course, no
Cypress Hill endeavor would be complete without a straightforward weed anthem and the honors here go to the dancehall-inflected
"FIRE," featuring
Damien Marley which sees
B switching between English and Spanish rhymes. Elsewhere, he dredges up more familiar gangsta rap themes including money-getting (
"Get That Dough," "Stack'n Paper"), those pesky haters (
"When They Hate You") and the token sex-for-sport yarn (
"When We're Fucking"). As such,
Smoke and Mirrors doesn't offer much in the way of originality, but after nearly 20 years on the mike,
B-Real has pretty well perfected his niche and his infectious, nasally rhyme flow, and
O.G. vetting commentary on the game and Cali-centric beats should be more than enough to keep fans' heads nodding.
~Matt Rinaldi, All Music Guide
;)
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