Rating: N
Nas was too easy on hiphop when he said it was dead. In the case of the Shop Boyz, Rockstar Mentality and their huge hit single, Party Like A Rockstar (with its idiotic “t-t-t-totally dude!” hook), it’s more like hiphop’s been beaten to death with a shovel, shot a few more times to make sure and its corpse dressed up like a clown and paraded around the town square.
Welcome to “hood rock,” Shop Boyz’ hybrid of rock and rap. (Um, does that sound familiar to anyone else?) To be fair, while the stuff from the Fred Durst era was more about rapping over rock, this is like typical Roland 808 beats with electric guitars geared toward the ringtone market.
A few song titles: Rollin’, Flexin’, Totally Dude, My Car. They try to make up for their hot garbage rhymes with as many repetitive hooks as possible. This album killed a piece of my soul.
