Bone Thugs-N-Harmony: BTNHResurrection : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Cleveland natives Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have embodied the Nineties hip-hop ethos: Establish your street cred, and take your hardcore pop. This is a group, after all, that lent its melodic rhyme flow to odes to public assistance (1995's "1st of tha Month") and Mariah Carey hits ("Breakdown"). On BTNHResurrection, the foursome doesn't stray from its most potent themes. The celestial concerns of its biggest hit, "Tha Crossroads," are revisited on "The Righteous Ones," a midtempo track with a harmonized chorus and keyboard bleeps. The Thugs renew their faith in mind-altering chemicals with "Weed Song," a piano-inflected standout ballad; murder and mayhem abound on "2 Glocks" and "Battlezone." Then, in typical contradictory hip-hop style, "Change the World" spreads a utopian message over a track that recalls Prince's "Little Red Corvette." It's all done in Bone Thugs' influential singsong style, but this time there are none of the dirge-y Wu-Tang influences of their last two albums. Bone Thugs may have only come full circle with this roughneck pop, but BTNHResurrection is a lively trip. (RS 839)

MILES MARSHALL LEWIS