SPIT: 90 Minutes of Hip Hop

Just listening to the new Mobb Deep record. The latest instalment in a career that has seen massive highs and lows. After releasing a brilliant and criticially acclaimed second album, Infamous, in 1995 the New York duo has released a string of weaker albums while moving between labels. Now they've signed with 50 Cent's G-Unit and they're looking for commercial success with Blood Money.

This may be why 50 Cent features on practically every song on this album. So if you don't like 50 you probably won't like the album at all.

This is the first "cool" album from Mobb Deep in a decade and the duo now has more exposure than ever. The beats here are polished for a mainstream audience but, as always, the G-Unit production is flawless.

Tracks like Creep and The Infamous are instant stand-outs but overall the album seems kind of empty. Some interesting synth beats here and plenty of good sample-tracks with G-Unit feel but not really much lyrical content. And some damn annoying hooks, like on Pearly Gates, with 50 Cent singing.

You're probably better off buying their 1995 Infamous album, if you haven't got it, if you're after good Mobb Deep but Blood Money has it's moments too.

Good question. This is Fiddy's betrayed cousin - two-five, 25 Cent, get it? It's supposed to be all sad, since 50 apparently has forgotten all about the hood.

Some of the tracks on his new mixtape sound so insanely like Fiddy's own. This is especially true with Fired Up.

The Future Star Music Group
make some fat synth beats and two-five is a good mc with a varied vocabulary.

It's actually quite a good mixtape. Some instant headbangers like Mo Billz and My Block and Name Callin' is a pretty clever freestyle.

It's a shame, really, that he sounds so much like Fiddy. Sometimes he sounds like himself and that's the sound he should be going for.