Since Nation, expectations for PE have always been sky high. But Muse Sick is not only a bad PE record but a bad hip-hop record -- evidence that Chuck either quit early, abandoning the album a few evolutions short of its completion, or has lost his ear altogether. And because Chuck, a man whose political power has always been a function of his aesthetic power, is the conscience of hip-hop, the failure of this album will cost him more than sales.

Diseased by weak hooks and plodding bass lines and beat loops, plagued by Chucks uninventive cadences, unimaginative lyrics and rhyming that never swings enough to qualify as flow, Muse Sick is painful to hear, whether or not you ever loved PE. Even Flavor is less than (comically) brilliant and only slightly less forgettable than Chuck. With Nation and Fear of a Black Planet, you could listen every day and every day hear something new. But on Muse Sick you just keep listening closer as though something were wrong with your ears, your tape, your headphones: Why am I not nodding? Why no grinning and squinting with glee? Why am I finger tapping with boredom?

Chuck's major thrust on Muse Sick is to attack gangsta rap, but his position offers few solutions and is poorly articulated -- not one of his couplets on the subject merits scrutiny. He seems to have forgotten that the most effective way for him to combat the gangsta trend is not to criticize the genre but to show how commercially viable his brand of social consciousness is -- as he did with Nation -- by releasing an incredible album.

Chuck tackles other important ideas on the album -- the hypocrisy of Columbus Day, Thanksgiving and Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays ("Hitler Day"), the problems of drugs in the black community ("Live and Undrugged") and the insanity of the music industry ("Living in a Zoo") -- but they, too, will be lost as the hip-hop community struts past Muse Sick.

Chuck heard all the pre-release doubting -- "They say I'm fallin' off/Yeah, they better call it off" -- but instead of exploding with dopeness, he descends to criticizing the critics: "Say payback's a crazy-ass message/Sent to the writers who criticize/They're fuck-in' wit' a freedom fighter." That's an old Chuck topic, but here it sounds like his way of saying that even if the albums not that good, he should be above criticism Please.

While Chuck struggles to cool the heat of gangsta rap, he's adding fuel to a more dangerous fire: the trend toward rappers actually assaulting people in the music industry and the media. In mid-May a young writer interviewing the Wu-Tang Clan was cold-cocked by a member of the group because of an article the journalist had done. There could hardly be a worse backdrop for Chuck's claim that "all a fuckin' critic does is/Draw a fuckin' line/Cross a line and dis my rhyme/And then they ass is mine/If you find a critic dead/Remember what I said/Who killed a critic/Guess the crew did it."

Really? So, Chuck, does that mean that because your album is wack, I should fear for my life?