Rating: NNN
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Veteran rap superstar and Terror Squad prez Joseph Cartagena’s month-delayed and retitled sixth record, All Or Nothing, sets out the way a Fat Joe disc should: with mad rage. Dope production team Cool & Dre’s chunky drums skip behind victorious horns, strings, colourful synths and Chipmunk-soul voices while the portly Bronx rapper barks about how ain’t nobody takin’ his spot. Joe’s best in his Spanish-peppered braggy aggro-thug mode – a tone that dominates the first 30 per cent of the record, as he spills that this is his last album and responds decently to 50 Cent’s dis record, Piggy Bank, on My Fofo with appropriate steroid jokes, gun threats and elements of the Flintstones theme. Then track 6 hits and we go from the ‘hood to the club. Nelly, R. Kelly, Mase, Eminem and Lil’ Jon appear, and suddenly Joe’s encouraging sexy mamas to get on the flo’. I liked it better when he was threatening to murder my family.
