Lloyd Banks' The Hunger for More: A Review

After the double platinum G-Unit debut Beg for Mercy (read review), anticipation was rather high for Lloyd Banks' solo set. It was not just his lady-friendly solo track Smile, or flurry of multisyllabic verses on that album, or even his show-stealing verse on Get Rich or Die Tryin's (read review) Don't Push Me alongside 50 Cent and Eminem. No, it was the consistency of his jaw-dropping performances on the mixtape circuit from 2002 until 2004 that had hip-hop fans salivating for his debut. They did not have long to wait, and Banks kept them hungry for his debut The Hunger for More, with mixtape after mixtape of quotable material.

That said, The Hunger for More is an album, a full-fledged album full of well-crafted songs and relatively few punch-line heavy bars. 50's influence is clearly here as banks croons more than a few hooks himself, over a rafter of slick beats from top-shelf producers, including Eminem, Timbaland, and Havoc of Mobb deep. It 's a G-Unit album, which means that features are kept all in the family. The only guests here besides Avant (featured on a hook) are Tony Yayo, 50, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Eminem, Young Buck and The Game, all either part of G-Unit or part of the extended Aftermath Records family. This works better here than on Beg for Mercy, as this album is shorter and there are more guests of varying styles. And banks holds his own and then some with each guest, showing that ieven if he's no longer spitting 50-bar verses, he's still razor-sharp lyrically.

The tracks of the album's first-half are slick, from the glossy playboy-ode I'm So Fly to the billowing Work Magic featuring Young Buck. And just when the content starts to become repetitive, there are the more introspective tracks When The Chips Are Down (featuring an excellent verses from The Game), Til the End, Die One Day and Southside Story. And while they lack the weight of a track like Many Men - (the rapper, 20 when he hit the mixtapes and 22 when he released this album was a bit too young to have shared 50 Cent's well-chronicled history), they still resonate because this Southside, Queens emcee, is a compelling storyteller with his own checkered past.

Still, there is a bit of a paint-by-numbers feel common to most G-Unit albums. There is a record here for every type of hip-hop listener, and while the tracks are well-crafted and well-sequenced, the lack of an organic feel mars the album a bit. It feels less like a work of art than the latest bit of corporate entertainment, less a candid confessional à la a pre-Death Row Tupac, a brilliant experiment à la Outkast or a mixed, creative bag à la post-Illmatic Nas. It is brand promo, and if you are anti-G-Unit as a brand, then there is little for you here. If you appreciate rap music without regard for rap personalities, images, or beefs, then the album is a collection of superior beats and rhymes about a relatively thin slice of life.