Consumer Guide Album

Master P.: Ghetto D [No Limit/Priority, 1997]
The title track is noxious and miraculous, hooked to a hectoring male singsong unlike anything I've ever heard. Subject: how to manufacture and distribute rock cocaine. The hit vies in rank sentimentality with "Candle in the Wind," hooked to a male groan also unlike anything I've ever heard. Subject: dead homies, a hard reality turned soft metaphor. The rest is underproduced propaganda for, reflections of, or fantasies about thug life that hold intrinsic interest only for live homies and their wannabes. Question: Why aren't crack buyers also victims of this "black-on-black crime" that must stop? And another: Why aren't there better things to do with talent and initiative? C+