The Block Brochure: Welcome To The Soil 1

Not everything works on the Bay Area rapper's sprawling three-volume, 60-track offering, but not only are none of these songs bad, two-thirds of them range from good to mind-blowing.

From his beginnings as a background player in ’90s gangsta rap—always well-respected, but never a commercial force—E-40 emerged as Bay Area rap’s most influential artist, the public face of the scene and a pioneer of a frenetic regional strain of hip-hop called hyphy. Without compromising his core Cali sound, the…

Much in the same way he released his 11th and 12th albums in 2010, and his 13th and 14th albums in 2011, E-40's 15th, 16th, and 17th albums were all released on the same day.