Well, Nas is on the album and he’s once again great as far as his rhymes are concerned, but somehow someway, I don’t feel Nas screaming “I.N.C”. 2Pac appears on the track too – at least not as a real rapper but just somewhere in the background (and this is not meant as a diss againt Tupac, not at all. I just don’t like him being bought buy other artists). “Me & My Boyfriend” with Toni Braxton and Irv sounds very similar to Jay-Z’s “Bonnie & Clyde” with Beyoncé. Well, of course, they used the same Tupac sample, that’s what everybody knew, but then I think Toni Braxton should have changed her song ‘cause it sounds so similar to Jay’s. Cadillac Tah appears on the album a few times, and he’s always cool, never extremely superdope but always convincing. So he does on “Come-N-Go” with Ja and Ashanti, but the track on the whole lacks originality and, I’m sorry for that, dynamic. Vita appears too on that track, and I can feel her there, she’s kinda rough and rugged, but her voice… Cadillac Tah’s solo track “Poverlous” is dope, definitely dope, and if Irv hadn’t produced about half of the songs I heard this summer on the radio, this track would be something great. But the things that I said being fact, well, then it’s a cool track with a certain structure that we all already know. The “Rainy Dayz” remix with Mary J.Blige is also hot: Ja Rule and Mary J. (and Charli I guess) on an oldschool beat that ap peared on Dre’s “ The Chronic 2001”, and Mary J. once again proves why she and not anyone else is the queen of R’n’B, no matter what sales figures there are for wannabe queens nowadays. Scarface of course does a great work lyrically, and the beat matches with him. Another track that is at least okay. The rest is filling material.

It seems to me that this album was not made with the last but not least and definitely necessary energy. I just don’t feel those tracks in a “new”, “remixed” way, it’s somehow someway still the same. And for we knew the lyrics already, well, there’s not that much new up in this one. The appearance of Tha Row’s artist Crooked I can’t change that much about that fact, even though she does not a bad job. It’s just, well, we know the type of sound, we know the lyrics, so why do they sell the same tracks with – of course – the same lyrics (which is normal) but so similar beats? I don’t get this, but maybe I just don’t feel it my personal way. It’s just Gotti.

***1/2 out of SIX SHOTS.