Streetlights

Ever since his triumphant debut on *The Chronic*, Kurupt has been one of the West Coast\'s biggest and busiest voices, cranking out new music at an alarming rate. Dropping countless features and steady albums with Tha Dogg Pound, he\'s also appeared in more than a dozen films, and puts out a new solo piece every few years. *Streetlights* is his seventh full-length, and while it continues his long-standing trend of G-centric rhymes and Cali-fied production, it also finds him stretching out a little in terms of experimenting with flows and cadences. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn\'t, but it\'s nice to hear him mixing things up a bit. Despite nearly two decades on the mic, Young Gotti still gets nice with his, especially on tracks like \"All That I Want,\" \"I\'m Drunk,\" and the contemplative \"Yessir.\"

After last year's lauded DJ Quik collab BlaQKout, the former Death Row mainstay finds a less fruitful partnership in Snoop producer Terrace Martin.

Combining with L.A. beatsmith Terrace Martin, Kurupt makes a commendable effort to prove his detractors wrong on the impressive Streetlights, defiantly proclaiming "I don't sell a lot of records 'cause people ain't like me" on the intro as if to say that he's an artist for whom street cred matters most. From there, Kurupt and Problem launch into "I'm Burnt" -- a devil-may-care weed anthem whose bouncy, hyphy-tinged beat will likely garner the most radio-play out of any of the songs on Streetlights. He then runs down a list of queries that he probably gets a lot from rap fans (i.e. "I'm glad you got back with Daz/But was Suge really whoopin' all them niggas ass?" and "New York really love you right?/So tell me, what really happened in ninety-five?") without responding to any of them on "Questions."

Streetlights will fit comfortably alongside the Spice 1 and D.O.C. records in your collection.