producer: pat viala, swizz beatz, buckwild, mr. fingers & irv gotti, j-runnah, dark half, omen, bernard 'big demi' parker, the burn unit

guests: reb of d.id.r., jaÿ-z, ja rule, da ranjahz, beanie sigel, noreaga

If you’re not a fan of the ‘thug life’, it will be hard for you to enjoy this album. Because this is straight thuggin’ from the first second, to the last fade. This is some murderin’, drug sellin’, head getting’ album. Nothing enlightening. A hustle. Oftentimes also to listen to it.

The whole album’s lyrics can be put into two quotations: "you know that it's G's up / roll till you eat some / I flow for the threesomes / chickens, I don’t need them / snitches I'ma see them / meet ‘em with the guns and heat em with the one's" ("Memphis Bleek Is...") and "bitches pay the price for thangz, rock ice and chains / yo, they change under the weather, it got a little cold, too iced out / you can hardly see the gold / that's the way a nigga rock now, don't stop now / still on the block now, shorty, hold the glock down" ("What You Think Of That"). And Memph remains on this tip for the rest of the album, all sounding similar, thematically not changing, just spitting straight up thug shit. And he does concentrate a lot on his flow, what often drags him into saying something because it sounds cool, rather then taking the rhyme forward. And you can hear his mentor Ja˙-Z in every word he pronounces, while we have to realize that Memph is just always lacking a notch in content, in flow, in switching from one flow to the next, to be as nice as the Jigga.

The new generation of beat smiths, pioneered by Swizz Beats and Irv Gotti, find some new apostles, in new cats with names like Pat Viala, J-Runnah, Dark Half, The Burn Unit or Dernard 'Big Demi' Parker. It’s nice seeing Memph giving some light to less known cats, which not necessarily bring the nicest results though. Every beat has that Roc-A-Fella aesthetic, which works on tracks like "Who’s Sleeping", that chimes with strings and a guitar lick, over a hidden bass. It especially works on the J-Runnah produced, piano heavy "Stay Alive In NYC", that gains momentum through the dramatic chorus and results on this arguably nicest beat on this project. "Memphis Bleek Is..." takes us further in Swizz exploration of drums and scratch patters, laced with a cheap sounding keyboard line, while the more and more jiggy and less and less rugged Buckwild (courtesy of D.I.T.C.), provides another nice track. On "What You Think Of That", a forward pushing guitar shares the minimal drums, and the thumping bass, with a soaring horns section. The heard before "Murda 4 Life" (feat. Ja Rule, this track was also on his album) is happenin’ too, while "Regular Cat", the second track by J-Runnah sounds like anything that could have been on the Teflon album some years ago.

In a way, all of this makes this album easy accessible, in the pop appeal way (play it in the background and it will not annoy you), but also in the ‘as heard before’ kind of way. But what defenitely needs to be said, is that whenever Ja˙-Z intends to hang up the mic for good, and wants to give the torch to carry Roc-A-Fella to somebody else, he does not have found a worthy successor yet. Memphis Bleek is not that man.