As a member of Dipset, who have suddenly become your favorite hipster’s favorite rappers, the man who calls himself Human Crack in the Flesh has created a lot of hype for a record on a label (the currently Jay-Z-headed Def Jam) that has been notorious in recent years for not being able to do just that.  Juelz Santana, with his wildly popular Back Like Cooked Crack mixtape series and semi-popular single “There It Go (The Whistle Song)”, may have done with L.A. Reid and company couldn’t, but the question then poses itself: has he betrayed his street-music loving (and probably Pitchfork reading) fans?  The truth is that this album does exactly what every armchair musician who theorized what they’d do to get famous; Santana makes an album chock full of the kind of trunk-rattlers that got him here in the first place, but makes sure to sprinkle throughout What The Game’s Been Missing! a set of songs made specifically for the 2005 hip-hop club.  It should be the perfect recipe for a successful album.  It also just happens to work out to become a good album, which should please the aspiring MCs who plan to make albums of “gutter music” while simultaneously saving up $50,000 for a Mr. Collipark beat.

As a prominent star of hip-hop’s mixtape circuit, Santana encounters the unique problem of feeding his fans music they’ve heard months before.  Thankfully, Juelz has held back a few gems from the public, as longtime fans may be distressed to see “Shottas”, “Murda Murda”, and “Mic Check” (which is edited for sample reasons) on the tracklist.   Sadly, outside of these tracks, Juelz’s Dipset family is nonexistent.  Cam’Ron, the former mentor and current partner-in-crime of Santana’s,  appears three times here on two of the older tracks and the lackluster “Kill ‘Em”, but fan favorites like the always-ornery Hell Rell, hobo-lookalike/CEO Jim Jones, and next-in-line J.R. Writer are all missing this time around.  Still, this album holds up surprisingly well without his fellow Diplomats.

Even at a lengthy 75:57 minutes long, this album never drags, with a sequencing job that continuously surprises the listener, for better or worse.  Nostalgic songs about childhood (“Good Times”) are followed by unimaginatively titled club bangers (“Freaky”), which awkwardly gives way to the outstanding, Damian Marley-inspired “Murda Murda”.  Whether it sounds good in spurts, the album still succeeds because, despite how much it sounds like a mixtape, the good on this album far outweighs the mediocre.  The Harlemite is still at his best when swaggering on tracks with lines like “I’m so mean and nice/ with the things I write/ Jesus might say ‘Jesus Christ!’”; while many rappers are egotistical, Dipset, and especially Santana, pull off their braggadocious antics in a charming manner.  Their charisma is unrivaled in modern hip-hop, no matter how annoying that whistle in his new single may get.

Despite this album ironically lacking the cohesiveness that most of Santana’s mixtapes have had, Crack in the Flesh stays his addictive, freebased self here.  While appearing to be no more than another homophobic, drug-dealing rapper to the untrained eye, Juelz Santana is instead one of the most likable personalities within the hip-hop industry today.  Battling against the influx of boring mixtape rappers who don’t claim to be narcotics personified,  that’s the kind of thing that could build some hype.

Go Hard: "Oh Yes", "Violence", "Shottas", "I Am Crack", "Murda Murda"

Hardly: "Clockwork", "There it Go (The Whistle Song)", "Make It Work For You", "Freaky"

Overall: 4 Out of Six Shots