Altsounds - Outlawz - We Want In - The Street LP [Album]

Over a decade after 2Pac took this group under his wing, they are still putting out music that is eactly the same as it was 10 years ago. Having featured on 28 albums, including a number of 2Pac's LPs, and them continuing to be strong in the genre is virtually impossible as this patchy album demonstrates. I'm always looking for the known kings of a genre to continue to push back the boundaries but as we all know, time takes it's toll on any group that have been working together for a long period.

"We Want In" has everything you would expect from the pioneers of Thug Life. Guns, Bitches and the hatred of fellow black Americans is all par for the course in these situations and such inspiring lyrics as "Thuggin' 'till I die" and "You gotta git dat, git dat, git dat, git dat" really draw you into the protagonist's life and force you to empathise with the troubles of this group of men. The fact that these troubles seem to be the same troubles that they have always been facing might just show that they're not learning from their mistakes! Songs such as 'Hunger Pains' explain the hardship of not having enough money to buy food, but after 28 albums in 13 years, they really need to get a better record deal then. Although their Myspace claims:

Quote:

"The only group in music history to be featured on over 40 million albums sold worldwide and never put out an album of their own on a major label!"

This might go somewhere to explaining their money troubles. There are some tracks that are musically very good, 'Love of Money' had a very full sound, with some dynamic beats and an eclectic use of different effects. In fact, most of the music is musically very tight, the different collaborating voices work very well together and overall it represents the genre very well. The fact is that it is a style that many have tried to emulate and failed, but Outlawz still manage to make it sound fresh. At least they're still trying to represent their roots and talk about the things that they think their audience would relate to, which is the same thing they were talking about when they first broke into the big time. I can't imagine that they are still having to fear for their life in the ghetto, and shooting people on a regular basis, which is what they continue to rap about as well as the tracks about poverty.

There is a nice homage to the people they know who have been killed, among those being 2Pac. While this is a nice sentiment, I'm sure there's probably one of these on each of the albums that the Outlawz have released, and though I haven't kept up to date with much of their work since 2Pac died, I can't imagine there's much new ground covered in this track.

Overall, "We Want In" is solid and sounds pretty good, but it's all style over content and there's nothing here that wasn't there when 2Pac first introduced the world to them.