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CD Review-Drag-On's Opposite

Drag-On

Opposite

(Ruff Ryders/Interscope)

No stars

One of the truly heartbreaking things about recent hip hop is watching skilled rappers make music seemingly produced by a gansta-rap market research team, with lame beats and ugly, hateful gangsta themes.

The latest entry in this dubious canon, Drag-On's Opposite of H20 allows the listener to hear Drag-On's potential evaporate as he rhymes about stacking grips, smacking hoes and how scary he is.

Drag-On - member of the same Ruff Ryders collective that gave the world the enlightened rap stylings of DMX and Eve - pulls out all the gangsta stops on the album, even including a chorus that says "The barrel goes click, click, clack."

The beats, produced by the distressingly ubiquitous Swizz Beatz, feature the same drearily bad synthesizers and monotonous drumbeats as every other Dr. Dre imitator. This sort of thing was innovative ten years ago, but has received far too much mileage.

Unfortunately, recent releases by the No Limit and Ruff Ryders collectives show no sign of giving up the style.

The 20-year-old Drag-On has rapping talent. His flow is fast and gruff, not unlike his labelmate DMX. Unfortunately, Drag-On's subject matter is no better than DMX's, featuring sadistic, juvenile fantasies about rape and gang violence.

Among the offerings here: a skit about pushing a handicapped man down a hill and out of his wheelchair, a skit featuring a STD-infected man orally copulating with an unsuspecting woman, and songs incorporating uncountable shootings.

Hip-hop has a social power extending beyond other music genres, the power to glorify an image in a manner more immediate and believable than most other styles. It is thus both disappointing and frightening to see the music used towards the base, exploitative ends it is here.