Lloyd Banks: Rotten Apple : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

As the title reflects, Banks’ second solo disc paints a particularly grim picture of his native New York. G Unit capo 50 Cent guests on three tracks, including opener “Rotten Apple,” a paranoid minor-key meditation on which Banks lays out the game plan: “Drama is a part of the story that I’m-a give ya/The black Mags and back stabs, it’s all familiar.” The drama runs from clichéd hustling how-to’s to less-typical excursions into the personal history that produced his mind-set, like “Survival,” on which the MC reflects on his father, who spent most of Banks’ life in jail: “Papa was a rolling stone/Never came back home, now I’m on my own/So I had to learn a few things ’bout survival.” Eminem, Mobb Deep’s Havoc and a host of G Unit regulars produce an album’s worth of chunky, ominous beats to fit Banks’ foul mood, but it runs a little thin over sixteen tracks.