Too $hort's growing label empire continued with
School Dayz, the first release from
Baby DC, an 11-year-old rapper who worked with
Ant Banks. Hip-hop fans familiar with
Master P.'s Lil' Soldiers will know about what to expect here -- namely, a surprisingly squeaky-voiced kid trying to act as hard as his grown-up heroes in the hip-hop world. Whereas
Master P. felt free to include almost as many obscenities on the Lil' Soldiers' album as the rest of his No Limit releases,
Too $hort and
Ant Banks designed
School Dayz so all content would be safe for kids of all ages. As such, the rhyme topics look back to early pop-rappers like
Kid 'N Play or Kriss Kross instead of the thug-life tactics to which many producers resorted to move products.
Baby DC does a good job; he's not only a solid rapper for his age, he's a solid rapper period, and the single "Candy Girl" is a fun update of
the Jackson 5-type infatuations for the hip-hop age. Though he can't quite keep it up for the entire LP,
Baby DC has a lot of time to improve. ~ John Bush