Notes & Personnel Info |  | Personnel: Scarface (rap vocals); Juvenile, Mike Jones , Pimp C, The Game, Beanie Sigel, Lil' Flip, Bun B (rap vocals). | | In 2006's MY HOMIES PART 2, Southern gangsta rapper Scarface blends violent ghetto tales like "Southern Nigga" with smartly told vignettes like "My Life," his reunion with the Geto Boys. Scarface may still be too raw for prime time, but when he's got cuts of the caliber of "Definition of Real," his collaboration with Ice-T, and "Never Snitch," where he partners with The Game, it doesn't matter. | | Scarface was never one of the more consistent hardcore rappers, falling prey to a tendency for cartoonish violence and comic-book gangsta fantasies. As long as his music hit hard, such traits were forgivable. Here he relies on familiar styles, samples, beats, and grooves. Since it follows Untouchable by just a year, it's of a piece with that album. He recycles beats and basslines, and he repeats themes over and over again. Includes the dynamic Master P collaboration "Homies & Thuggs." [A Screwed & Chopped version was also released.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine | | Over-releasing like he was Master P with bills to pay, Scarface didn't even let one month of 2006 pass before he followed the excellent One Hunid with the guest-star-filled My Homies, Pt. 2. To put some confusion to rest, One Hunid was a "Scarface presents" affair -- that is, he was presenting his new crew, the Product -- but it contained much more material from Scarface himself than My Homies, Pt. 2, which looks more like a solo album than it is (longtime fans are less confused, because the original My Homies was also a near-compilation). With that out of the way, My Homies, Pt. 2 is better than its predecessor and would be every reason a Scarface fan needs to celebrate if it didn't draw attention away from the superior One Hunid by proximity. After Z-Ro and Ice Cube help Scarface set things off with the club banger "Definition of Real," Beanie Sigel and the Game join the man for the solid "Never Snitch." From here on in, Scarface bows out just about every other track, but if the listener accepts the album as a compilation, there's plenty of solid material left. Z-Ro's "Man Cry" is a heart-wrenching classic, perfectly complementing Scarface's own tales of bleakness and struggle. Skip and the Ghetto Slaves revive the beat from Mike Jones' slept-on "Cutting" for the party-starting "We Out Here" while Lil' Flip, Chamillionaire, and Bun B have a hood anthem on their hands with "Platinum Starz." Bouncing between the slick and the dirty, the bleak and the bravado, My Homies, Pt. 2 still hangs together well, and with little filler to suffer, only those who want an album of entirely Scarface are going to be disappointed. ~ David Jeffries | | Scarface was never one of the more consistent hardcore rappers, falling prey to a tendency for cartoonish violence and comic-book gangsta fantasies. As long as his music hit hard, such traits were forgivable, but he began to slip in the mid-'90s, relying on familiar styles, samples, beats, and grooves. All of these factors are reasons why his double-disc opus My Homies was not the greatest of ideas. Scarface simply doesn't have enough ideas to sustain an album of this gargantuan size, especially since it follows Untouchable by just a year. He recycles beats and basslines, and he repeats themes over and over again. The moments that do work, such as the dynamic Master P collaboration "Homies & Thuggs," only put the weakness of the remaining album in sharper relief. My Homies would have been tiring if it had been a single 70-minute disc, but at this bloated double length, it's plain exhausting. [Further pain comes from the fact that this is the "screwed & chopped" version -- essentially slowing down and stretching out an already sprawling album.]~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine | | Scarface's two-disc opus MY HOMIES keeps an unswerving eye on something too many rappers tend to ignore: the music. That's not to say that his lyrical and verbal skills are anything less than first-rate, but underneath the raps there's a real musicality at work, which serves to not only support, but enhance Scarface's observations about modern-day urban life. Irresistible analog synth hooks, simple-but-arresting rhythm tracks, and a sense of arrangement that is both economical and effective; these are the tools that Scarface uses to realize his vision. On the thirty cuts contained here, he examines the world he sees around him, the hustlers, the violence and the emotional turmoil, with a real sense of empathy. |
Producer: J-Prince |
Musical Guests | | 2Pac | | The Game | | Devin | | Mike Jones | | Juvenile | | Master P | | UGK | | Ice Cube | | Tela | | Too Short |
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