B.G.: Livin' Legend : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

B.G.'s 1999 hit "Bling Bling" was the apotheosis of rap's materialist era, a song so stunningly and alluringly gauche that it gave the movement its name. Now estranged from his ice-rocking Cash Money brethren, B.G. is free to revisit the thuggish tales that earned him the moniker Baby Gangsta. His seventh album is packed with trademark New Orleans thug bounce -- tinny, synthesized beats motored by double-time bass -- over which B.G. mugs meanly for the mike with the casual cocksureness of a vet. He takes time out to toast his kids ("My Son and Daughter") and the fine ladies of rap ("Hottest of the Hot"), but special space is reserved in his cross hairs for his former labelmates on "Real Niggas and Real Bitches": "Thought you could stick a fork in me/Better think again." A hot boy, still.

JON CARAMANICA
(From RS 920, April 17, 2003)