Naughty By Nature: Iicons : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

New Jersey hip-hop vets Naughty by Nature have been making heavy-rotation rap for more than a decade, setting the stage for the genre's Top Forty bum-rush with singalong hits "O.P.P." and "Hip Hop Hooray" in the early Nineties. Their fifth album, Iicons, finds Treach and Vinnie (producer Kay Gee is out) dropping their signature sure-shot combo of fist-pumping rhymes and anthemic hooks. These versatile pros are in fine form, equally charismatic flipping raunchy verses with purring Teen People cover girl Pink on the breathy "What You Wanna Do" and wildin' out with rabid mike-ripper Bumpy Knuckles on "Ashes to Ashes." Though tinny, flat production plagues some cuts -- "Wild Muthafuckas" flounders in stale, manufactured aggression -- Treach and Vinnie come correct on the rowdy shoot-'em-up "Rah Rah," proving they can still rap circles around many newer-school MTV thugs. In true Naughty fashion, though, it's breezy party jams such as the jittery, melodic "N.J. to L.A." and the self-explanatory "Feels Good" that go down the sweetest.

KATHRYN MCGUIRE
(RS 897 - June 6, 2002)