Lest anyone think that
E-40's tank was nearly drained, given that 2015 entailed only an EP, the prolific veteran returned the following year with another one of his multi-volume album sets. There's nothing profound about
D-Boy Diary: Book 1, a significant portion of which is inessential and/or revisits past highlights, with productions merely functional more often than they are distinctive. Just over half of the tracks amount to a durable set of buoyant, funk-laced material. Joined by
Gucci Mane,
Kent Jones, and
G-Eazy, among several others,
E-40 always sounds energized, even when the rhymes are routine, and no one else sounds like him. ~ Andy Kellman