producers: freddie foxxx, alchemist, pete rock, diamond d

guests: terisa griffin, billy danz, m.o.p.

18. The Mastas feat. M.O.P.

Sure enough: hip hop and bragging go hand in hand like sports and wear, a wall and a graffiti or a simile and a review. However, Bumpy, while well respected, loved, praised and experienced, he can't live up to his constant claim of being the best. And as he does this so abundantly, you have to give him slack for still owing us the proof, that he will kill anybody on the mic. Sure enough, there's the necessary number of well needed and contently quoted punchlines, but some of the lines are still babbling, and so pound for pound, he's still not the best.

He opens the album with a live bit, taken from some performance at the Roxy. And the punches to the music industry start right here. It's combined with some pro hip hop rambling, but we should be moving forward and check out the first proper track on here: "24 Hrs.". Here he claims "this is probably the realest shit you ever heard", but actually it's not. Still, the way he starts the track, with some echo enhanced spoken statements, it's quite effective. And with Bumpy's excitement behind the chorus of the Alchemist produced "Tell 'Em I'm Here", you will be raising your hand when the role call for his army recruitment is coming around. Next up, "Bambaataa & Bumpy Talk Industry" is exactly that. And Bumpy's boldness can be heard on "Inside Your Head", when he goes: "I'm sick and tired of Nore and his 'what, what, what' / write some rhymes, nigga, or get his shit up up up / I'll beat you till your face is made ugly like Biz / if you ever open your mouth to ask me what a Memph Bleek is / this week is, Bumpy Week celebrated / and be glad that the bad kid from the neighborhood made it / the last album you dropped, kid, hate it / man the only thing I'll do for your life, nigga, is complicate it". Pete Rock comes around to hook up the beat for "Who Knows Why?". While it's cool enough, it actually screams for some horns or just something that makes this more than the little it is. Same goes for "Searchin'", that just seems unfinished, or too minimal for it's own good.

Bumpy then takes up back a few years with his beat to "Never Bow Down", as this sounds like a demo version of a "Efil Rof Zaggin" track. Pete Rock then returns to do his best Beatminerz impersonation on "Industry Shakedown". Bumpy is spitting venom, going "I kept the pressure on him, now, I'm Universal / now he played this money game called hand, reversal / I remember when I thought that I could rock at Def Jam / while I was watching other niggas caught up in a death scam / I remember when I stepped to Lyor, I should've blown him / cause that cracker been a crook, ever since I first known him / thought I'd sale to Atlantic / but there's niggas working for 'em that'll sink the whole label / like the fucking Titanic / what I gotta do is run some dick up in Sylvia Rhone / so she can hear Bumpy rocking on this microphone / maybe I can Elektra-fy her brain / show her how I take love and turn it to pain". He's also kicking "you can hate me now but I will rhyme again / fall down climb again, more wild, more corrupt / still spitting more shit, more fire, more abrupt", and we can hear in his voice how much this actually comes from his heart.

The boom bap continues on "MCs Come And MCs Go", that sports a dope self produced beat. This track also provides us with the possibly nicest line on this album: "I'm so hard that after me you need a Will Smith song to appreciate life". On the Diamond D. produced "Bumpy Bring It Home", Bumpy teams up with Billy Danz of M.O.P. The beat is a trip back on memory lane, as this could have easily been on "Stunts, Blunts And Hip Hop", it's that nice. Following suit, the 12" track "Bumpy Knuckles Baby" kicks in. This time Pete Rock is impersonating Premo, Bumpy spits "I do it to young niggas, old niggas, rock niggas, soul niggas / scared niggas, bold niggas, since '89 I told niggas / I'm still ripping with this timeless shit / while you niggas spit that offbeat rhyming shit / my life is full of hard times and shit / so all I rhyme about is whooping niggas asses and crime and shit" as well as "yo get the fuck up out my face, B, I'm an MC / not some fake-ass rapper kissing ass at the Gavin / asking how can he be down, I make impact / like the four-pound slug ripping through a nigga cap". Premo then actually did the beat for "R.N.S.", keeping it darker than usual, but with all the scratching and choppyness that is his trademark.

The b-side to the previously mentioned 12": "Stock In The Game" is still one of the nicer cuts, as the Alchemist has brewed something lethal. Bumpy uses this to spit "I keep it blacker than Cadillac's in '69 / total eclipse your record and stole your shine / sixteen bars of homemade moonshine rhyme". He produced another beat for himself, that manifested as "Feel Like I Been Here", before he teams up with both M.O.P.'s to do "The Mastas", going after a now defunct glossy paper: "I'm such a real nigga I take it to Blaze and tell 'em make it '51 Greatest Niggaz of All Time' / or I shoot up the page". That problem kinda solved itself, huh? Last but not least, Bumpy kept the best for last, as "A Part Of My Life" is the end to this album. With the true chorus "rhyming is a part of my life / I'ma die with rhyming kids and a rhyming wife / I don't let nobody judge me that don't know how to do what I do / so if you don't like it then fuck you!", punchlines like "come against me and I give you one of three picks: get shot, get stuck up, get your ass kicked" as well as an extra dope Premo beat, this stamps down a star on the hip hop walk of fame.

What makes us to conclude that this album is solid, has the potential to excite, and takes it back to straight beats and straight lyrics. While at times that's dope enough, some times it's not enough. So this 'Industry Shakedown' is everything on the scale between an apocalyptic earthquake to a rocking chair.