Naam Brigade loses the war
The mid-1990s gave birth to a new breed of thug. The millennium thug – we can call him the party thug.
You know him. He’s the one that brags about hustling his “product” in the same breath that he says he’s popping bottles of Cristal with model chicks.
He’s the one that laces his rap with all of the trappings of wealth – cars, clothes and jewels.
But the things most important to the party thug are keeping the club jumping and looking good while he’s doing it.
Artist Direct Records tried to market Naam Brigade as hardened thugs with a fun side, but they should have just labeled them party boys.
As a “thug,” your street credibility begins to suffer when your album has five songs in a row about partying and getting girls at the club.
Naam’s debut album, Early in the Game, starts out pretty honorably, with the obligatory intro skit rolling into the title cut which will definitely keep your head knocking.
Next is “Gangsta,” which has production so tight you can overlook some of the corny lines that fly off these guys’ lips. Naam does a pretty convincing job of letting the public know they’ve had their share of hard knocks to shape their personas. But on the sixth track they begin to slip.
“All the Money” is a Jay-Z-inspired song that seems out of place after the rock guitar-ridden “We Live It.”
The infantile hook sounds like the kids’ guide to pimping. A baby-voiced female chants “all the money they got / bring the hoes they got / all the money bring the hoes / and the ice and the clothes.”
From this point the songs fall into a downward spiral of trying to be too many things for too many people.
“All Night” is a generic-sounding club song, blatantly geared toward women. “What You Doin’ Wit Dat” wants desperately to be a track by Mannie Fresh of Cash Money Records, but comes up sounding like noise.
Even the guest appearance by Juvenile can’t save it. “For Sheezy” is another look-at-me-I’ve-got-cash song.
But with a hook like “for sheezy baby / we off the heezy baby / take a playa, well believe me baby / stop frontin’ like that and take it easy baby,” they’re just bad imitations of Ja Rule.
“Ooh Wee” is a horrible attempt to capture Snoop Dogg’s California charm. With fake West Coast accents on the hook, they sound like they’re making fun of him.
“Did It, Did It” is Naam’s attempt at Southern-style staccato rhyme delivery over a high-speed track with a lot of bounce. You’d be pretty strong-willed to endure this track to the end.
“Lights Out” has decent production, and it would be worth listening to, if you could get rid of the sub-par vocals – it’s a waste of a decent track.
For “We Got it Locked,” poor Naam probably couldn’t get hold of Nate Dogg, so the guys made a shameless attempt to copy his singing style with the weak chant on the hook.
The album closer, “Thugs,” is an erratic, Latin-flavored track that doesn’t match the content. These guys are talking about their stick-up buddies over a salsa club beat.
The Verdict: When first listening to this CD, it’s easy to think there’s a few bad songs on a good album, but after a while you see it’s the other way around.
They tried to cover too many bases, tried too many styles on one album, and it just sounds confused.
Naam Brigade loses the war
