hiphop-elements.com

2005 Female Fun

1. MVU (Act 1)
2. It’s A Stick Up - 5
3. Flattery (feat. Steinski) - 5
4. My Friend The Popmaster - 4
5. Inside Your Mind (feat. Mr. Dead & MC Paul Barman) - 1
6. El Ka Bong - 4
7. MVU (Act 2)
8. Yes, I Do Love Them Ho’s! - 4.5
9. What Are You Afraid Of? - 5
10. I Want You (I'm An 80s Man) (feat. Bimos) - 3.5
11. Profit - 3
12. The Boston Top (f/ Mr. Dead & Newkirk) - 2
13. MVU (Act 3)
14. And The Winner Is? - 3.5
15. Gangsta’s My Style - 4
16. The Night My Girlfriend Left Me (f/ MC Paul Barman) - 2.5
17. Live @ 5 - 3.5
18. MVU (Final Act)
19. Think or Die - 4

Overall: 3.5 / 5


Prince Paul's latest outing is a loosely knitted concept album featuring him on the run, nearly devoid of rapping, and pushed along by vocal samples, skits, and appearances by MC Paul "Why is Prince Paul still down with you?" Barman. It's a novel idea, and exactly what people should expect from Paul's creativity, but without the beats, a concept instrumental album is worthless.

The album opens with "It's A Stick Up!" which has Prince Paul at his finest. Great vocal samples over a great, borderline cartoonish beat. A good start, to say the least. "Flattery" follows, which is smoother, but equally colorful and fitting. Two 5s in a row. The album's incredibly strong up until "Inside Your Mind", which I guess is supposed to be ironically bad, a la "Politics Of The Business", but it's nearly unlistenable as Mr. Dead throws cadence out the window and raps over an equally uninviting, noisy thrash of a beat. Paul Barman closes the track and, as usual, he says nothing for the sake of rhyming words together. The first misstep, but not the last. The album tends to follow the pattern of a few good tracks, a purposely (?) bad/corny one, so on and so forth (up until the end, when they're all pretty unremarkable).

Starting at about track 10, the beats become increasingly dull, sounding more and more like drawn-out interludes or intentional jokes. They're not all bad, but they definitely don't hold their own as instrumental beats. They would have been much better suited with somebody rapping over them. Aside from that, a lot of life leaves the album at the halfway mark. The upbeat songs fade out and the album's left with more minimal, plodding sounds. It ends on a nice note with "Think Or Die", but doesn't quite make up for the few tracks that don't begin to reflect Prince Paul's skill.

The album has its definite ups and downs, and some people will like it a lot more than others depending on their sense of humor and taste in instrumentals. Prince Paul's never short of creativity, but his execution doesn't quite match-up in this case. I'll be listening to the handful of amazing tracks, but don't see myself returning to the album often. Give it a download, though, and judge for yourself, maybe you'll appreciate the jokes more than I did.

thanks

No problem. Need an upload also?

yeh sure why not

3.5/5 albums usually end up being some of my favorites.

appreciated

i'm kinda sad since paul is one of my idols...can i get an upload?

decent album i agree with 3.5/5 rating i think this album could grow on me but we'll see

you didn't cop this.

I got this a month or two ago...I was loving it the first week or so then soon enough it got shifted to the back...still its a really good album to listen to but certainly not for everyone.....i personally like all the humor....