THE GOOD NEWS:
I guess one or two of the beats on here won't seem too terrible the first time you hear it.

THE BAD NEWS:
Some of the worst material I've ever heard. The lyrics are awful, not to mention exactly like 5,000,000 other similar albums. The production is terrible. Obviously Scarface went for quantity over quality here, because there are lots of tracks, but not a single listenable one. NO originality is on My Homies.

First of all, sorry about not reviewing the albums by Co-Flow and Boogiemonsters as soon as I thought I would. I'll get around to them, I promise. But, this album was just soooooooooo bad, that I felt like I needed to comment on it. Somebody needed to warn the people about this garbage, and I guess I'm the guy to do it. . .

My Homies is Mr. Scarface's fifth solo album. However, like its title implies, this is less of a true solo venture for the former Geto Boy as it is a compilation effort, co-starring all of Scarface's "homies," of course, as only a couple of the tracks on this double-album do not feature a guest-artist rapping alongside Scarface. Scarface Presents... My Homies would have been a more accurate title.

As for these guest rappers, there are lots of them. Some you have probably heard of, others are undoubtably unknown to anyone that isn't the world's biggest expert on Gangsta Rap. You'll find Master P, Tupac, Ice Cube, Too $hort, Do Or Die, and the Facemob here, not to mention fellow Geto Boys Willie D and Bushwick Bill. The sad thing is, not one of the guest appearances manage to add anything to the record, and instead of sounding like a true album, instead it comes across as a really bad soundtrack due to all of the different artists that appear on it.

Somebody really oughta tell Scarface to get some new material. This stuff is so cliche and unoriginal that it makes Capone-N-Noreaga seem like effing Latyrx. Everything that you'd expect would be on an album like this is here: senseless violence, sexism, weed smoking. However, there is nothing more than this. Unlike some of Scarface's previous releases, there is no sort of justification of this violence with songs that contain messages. Here, it's just violence for the sake of violence.

I know what you're thinking. . . "this guy doesn't even like gangsta rap, he doesn't know what he's talking about, blah, blah, blah" Not true. Violence in music doesn't really bother me too much, though. I'm not against Gangsta Rap whatsoever, as I'm a fan of artists such as Ice Cube (pre-1995 Ice Cube, that is), Ice-T (ditto with Ice Cube, give or take a few years), and Nas (um, the same as the previous two. . . I wonder why all the violent rappers I used to like have fallen off?) that had some pretty violent music. However, when violence is just used as a gimmick. . . I can't stand it. Some artists just aren't creative enough to write interesting lyrics and instead use all the cliches they can think of to sell records. Scarface, despite his impressive contributions to songs such as "Mind's Playing Tricks On Me" early in his career, has become the latter. Now he's just an absolutely pathetic example of an emcee. I've always kinda liked Face, as he's generally represented the best of Gangsta Rap, but that's no longer true. Too bad, so sad.

Sure, even if his rapping wasn't that bad (which it is, believe me). . . the beats here are beyond weak. You've heard them all before on any other G-Rap album. Hell, Dr. Dre's "California Love" is even sampled on "Southside: Houston, Texas." Can you believe that? They sampled "California Love." Considering that it's only a couple years old, that's just lame. At least Puff Daddy rips off songs that were hits about 10 or 15 years ago. . . All in all, you've heard these sort of beats way too many times already. It's the same heavy bass, goofy keyboards-type stuff that has been coming out of the West Coast commercial rap scene for years, except with a very "rushed" and "uncomplete" feel. No originality is in the production whatsoever.

No originality on the album whatsoever, make that. I can't even get over how lame this is. All the cliches are here. . . the wack R&B singing on a track ("Warriors"), the unoriginal song dedicated to sex (the Too $hort-featuring "F*ck Faces"), and even trying to cash in on the current double album trend. By the way, I normally don't like double-albums (read my review of Wu-Tang Forever for more info on that), and in this case, two albums of this crap was simply unbearable to listen to. . . This could only be more uninspired if the Homies in the title of the album was spelled with a Z at the end of it.

I'm trying to think of something good to say about this album, but there really is next to nothing. The album cover even sucks. Any song that was even listenable got ruined in some way or another.The lowest moment of the album would probably be "Homies & Thuggs" featuring Tupac and Master P. Scarface comes off with a lousy verse, Master P just keeps saying "UUNNNNNNGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" (did I spell that right?), which I swear has to be the most annoying vocal effect in pop music since Mariah Carey's pig-squeal, and the treatment of Tupac's verse has to be looked at as very disrespectful to his memory. . . it's a sub-par recording, all staticky and fuzzy, with a totally different beat then the rest of the song. Not to purposely bring up Puffy twice in the same review (you know I hate even thinking about him), but it's sorta like "All About the Benjamins". . . you know how Biggie Smalls's verse in that song had a totally different beat, and it was obviously not originally intended for the song, but was just pasted on, old beat and all, because B.I.G. just couldn't *ahem* make it to the recording studio? Same deal here. Except it's done way less professionally. Now, I wouldn't ever say that Tupac was quite up to Supa Emcee status (on the contrary, in my humble opinion, he's probably one of the most overrated rappers of all time), but he did bring emotion to the mic that couldn't be denied. His verse on "Homies & Thuggs" has a fiery rawness to it that the rest of the album sorely lacks. Too bad Scarface and his cronies treated the verse like garbage.

I thought Scarface's last album, The Untouchable, was lousy. Well, it was just below-average. This one is just plain WACK. You know it has to be if I give it a lower score than I gave Insane Clown Posse's album. At least ICP were sorta original (even if it was in their own sick, twisted sort of way). If you somehow do like this album, plain and simply, you need to quit hanging out at the weed-spots, quit throwing up gang-signs, quit slapping b*tches, and DEFINITELY quit listening to the radio and watching MTV. . . and instead start listening to some REAL Hip-Hop. File My Homies, one of the worst albums this reviewer has ever had the displeasure of hearing, under trash.

---Steve Clark

Did I get it wrong? E-mail me at stevec@netnitco.net with all comments or questions you may have.

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