Lloyd Banks - Rotten Apple (G-Unit/Interscope)

Vibe.com, September 19th, 2006

He may be regarded as G Unit’s poster boy (Young Buck’s sweaty bravado notwithstanding), but in truth, LB is the punch line prince. From G Unit’s early mixtape days, he’s specialized in rewind-worthy quotables marked by an assassin’s cold heart, an ironist’s savage humor, and a willingness to say what others won’t. Or, perhaps, shouldn’t. Remember—this is the cat who once cracked, “I’m hungry like a South African with flies stuck to his face.”

On Banks’s 2004 debut, The Hunger for More (G-Unit/Interscope), he couched his brainy witticisms in radio-ready tracks, honing a successful medicine-to-sugar ratio. Apple follows the same blueprint, but his bon mots are overshadowed by deliberately glitzy production. While Lloyd speaks on his favorite topics (ice, girls, guns), Midi Mafia supplies ominous, reverb-heavy drums on “Make a Move.” Dave Morris successfully tackles the tough assignment of providing an exceptional bounce track for Banks, Young Buck, 8Ball, and Scarface on “Iceman.” Tops here, though, is Ron Browz on “Help,” and he takes a glorious five-finger discount on Three 6 Mafia’s hi-hats for “Playboy Pt. 2,” the album’s highlight.

All the while, Banks talks his talk: throwing “bitches out the crib like Jazzy Jeff,” watching a TV “the size of Kevin Garnett,” and claiming he’s got a “white fan base because Eminem is my partna.” But these clever turns of phrase, the reason you go to Banks in the first place, are in lesser supply on Apple, replaced with boilerplate declarations of supremacy that are less likely to need footnotes. Maybe he’s having an identity crisis. At one point, he claims, “Banks don’t rhyme for the backpack.” Methinks he doth protest too much.

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