Xzibit: Weapons Of Mass Destruction : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Everyone's favorite ride-pimper shows why he should keep his rapping day job one of the pleasures of MTV's Pimp My Ride is watching middle-rank L.A. rapper Xzibit play a benevolent facilitator of hooptie renovation. With Weapons of Mass Destruction, his fifth album, Xzibit also has pimped his microphone persona, integrating class-conscious critiques and Bush-bashing righteous anger into his muscular, dextrous rhymes. "Cold World" draws parallels between an inner-city hustler and an Iraqi family who couldn't escape our bombs, and the ghetto-soul "Judgement Day" sells X's soft side. Among the more conventional hip-hop tracks, the highlights are the Timbaland-produced "Hey Now (Mean Muggin')" and "Muthafucka," in which Xzibit spits dense, syncopated fire over souped-up Seventies funk. Weapons is dragged down by too much unremarkably brawny fare, but Xzibit works enough variations on hard and heavy to ensure that rapping will remain his main gig.