In a way every artists needs to make a decision at one time in his career: do I stay underground, or do I try to go mainstream. The reason why this decision often (well, too often) needs to be made is, because it influences the style of music the artist will do from then on. At least in gray theory. Because each 'subgenre' is obedient to a certain number of rules (admit it), that defines or strongly influences and determines, what you will do and how you will sound. That's not how it should be and often enough there are exceptions to the rule, but nevertheless, it's like that. And this album is showing proof. Because on this undoubtedly 'underground' album (and we hate this term as much as you), a group of people does a standard sound, that's more common to the mainstream, and it doesn't work. Well, not all the time, but too often, it just doesn't sound right, sometimes really bad, and only sometimes quite or really good.

One of those good tracks is the opening song. "718" gives us enough nice lines, combined with a driving DJ Premier beat. And speaking of DJ Premier, he's not the only big name collaborator on this record, that not only boasts the presence of him, but also of the Hoodfellaz, Grand Master Caz, M.O.P. and Mr. Cheeks, not to mention Jay-Z. His contribution, however, is very easily explained, as his mentor Jaz-O is featured on nine of the nineteen tracks. And so although the word is that the two don't talk to each other anymore, Jay still spits on "Let's Go!", over a Jaz-O beat (and Zukhits is very quick to offer a part two of this beat on the ridiculously similar "Never Forget You", with both even featuring the singing of Shareefah). And that is actually one of the main reasons why this album is not really good. Because Jaz is not the best producer on the planet, but one that is very much copying the mainstream sounds. Again a case of proof is "Jinkin" that easily could be substituted by a mass of other beats that sound very similar. Even "Let's Go!" is boring, and could easily be a Swizz or anyone of that bunch offering.

So we really need to pick out the good beats on here, as the weak ones make the standard rhyming even more mediocre. Now the flows the Immobilarie spit are okay, but content wise, we are just getting too much hustlin', dealin', handlin' biddniz and stancing, than is healthy in one day. So the better tracks are the hard "This Be Him", the different to the other tracks Hoodfellaz featuring "All In Da Game", as well as the while still very synthetic "The Best", at least has drive. DJ Premier (to no one's surprise) makes the rappers again sound better than they otherwise do on "Love Is Gone". And here the rhyming cats even come with something of relevance. M.O.P. is then making "Pledge Allegiance" interesting, while Craftworks does something untypical on "Enemy Lines" and finally even Jaz-O manages to do something interesting on the low booming on "I Do", or on the real soul sampling "Diaries", as well as the movie energy having "Deadly".

But all of that doesn't take away from the groaning chorus on "Take Me Papi" that's just crap. The previously mentioned twosome is either a badly explained remix or sequel, or just embarrassing. "Live It Up" featuring DK is shamelessly copying Down South flavors, while "I Know What You Like" is again sounding like a trillion of other songs that we previously had to endure. It's then however getting really sad when Grandmaster Caz (of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers) is loosing all shame and does "Slut". And last but not least, on the bonus track "B.Q.E." that features Mr. Cheeks, D.R. Period is doing one of his worst beats ever.

So to put this straight: this is borrowing too much, even more than should be allowed without consequences, from other people. You get the flavors and styles from Swizz Beats (and the rest of the Ruff Rhyder in-house production team), from Wu-Tang and from Jay-Z. And so not necessarily the rappers, but certainly the producers need to blush, or we have to believe they have no shame. This offers so little new, so little exciting, so little that we really need to hear. There's very little of pure dopeness on here. That's a hard statement, but no unfair statement. Because the blatantly and banality of all of this, just prevents us from saying anything less harsh.