Juvenile: Reality Check : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

With a decade of party-hearty bounce hits like "Back Dat Azz Up" to his name, New Orleans native Juvenile hardly qualifies as a pointedly political rapper. But while finishing Reality Check, the hurricanes hit, and the 'Nolia boy wrote "Get Ya Hustle On," a rallying cry for everybody who "need a check from FEMA" after they "lost everything in Katrina." Juve hasn't turned into Chuck D (on "Hustle," he tells refugees to sling drugs to recoup their losses), but the fire in this enraged Cajun's gut results in a fierce, focused album. The Cool- and Dre-produced "Rodeo" (already a video smash) revisits Juve's long-held pro-stripper sentiments, while "Addicted" is a restraining order disguised as a smoothed-out ballad; Juvenile snarls, "So what you got my name tattooed on your body!" as Brian McKnight croons, "You're just addicted to what the dick did." "Animal" is a reunion jam with Cash Money producer Mannie Fresh, where Juve flows over tumbledown bass bumps and a stutter-step bounce beat. On tracks like these, at least, the Crescent City is alive and well.