Reefer, booze, hoes, guns, and parties: Are there any other topics more generic in the rap world than these five things? Yet it continues to sell, which results in albums like the eponymous debut from the
Mo Cheda Mobstaz. Mo Cheda Records is a subsidiary of Warlock Records, and this collection represents the collaborative efforts of its various artists. The guru of these tracks is producer
DJ Squeeky, whose tense beats are typical of the Dirty South sound. He keeps things quite simple, relying on the usual gangsta fantasies to fill in the lyrics, while the beats maintain a contagious bounce. If these MCs had the imagination of a
Dr. Dre or a
Jay Z, they might be able to survive on these elements alone. But they are more comparable to post-
Dre Eazy-E, bragging about their lifestyles with rhymes so generic that they barely count as rapping ("Y'know a nigga got down on the hoe, of course/I pulled her over, got her name and her number, oh boy!") With artists like
OutKast and
Ludacris upping the stakes in the Dirty South genre, crews like the
Mo Cheda Mobstaz don't have much of a chance of moving beyond minor indie success without some twist to help them stand apart. Until these DJs and MCs find what that is, all they have are bland albums like this one to appeal to an increasingly demanding rap audience. ~ Bradley Torreano