Lloyd Banks' Rotten Apple: A Review

Despite the platinum-selling success of the Get Rich or Die Trying soundtrack (read review) hip-hop fans were already beginning to murmur about the decline of G-Unit, given the less than platinum sales of Tony Yayo's debut Thoughts of a Predicate Felon(read review), and the thoroughly disappointing sales of Mobb Deep's G-Unit debut, Blood Money (read review), it was up to platinum-selling, punchline-spitting Lloyd Banks to show and prove the continued potency of the franchise. Besides Young Buck, he was the most likely candidate, given his prior success and his lyrical ability. Unfortunately, Rotten Apple, Banks' sophomore album, fails to live up to either Banks' talent or the heights of G-Unit's previous success.

Unlike his previous album, The Hunger For More (read review), Rotten Apple is surprisingly listless. Banks' monotone flow fares poorly over a slate of largely workmanlike beats. The melodious hooks G-Unit has tended to favor are eschewed for either sampled or rapped hooks. Sonically, there's little exciting here and considering that G-Unit releases tend to match No Limit releases in terms of variety of content, there are no surprises here. Moreover, Banks does not imbue many tracks with the kind of energy found on earlier mixtape tracks and on The Hunger For More. Even the Tony Yayo feature sounds like the verses were being phoned in. It's possible that some of the listlessness may be attributed to his having had his intended sophomore album The Big Withdraw leaked, but whatever the reason, Rotten Album is a rather joyless affair.

For an album titled Rotten Apple, you might expect an album that paints New York City in rather bleak terms, but the combination of monotonous flow, beats, and content create an uncharacteristically stark atmosphere for either a G-Unit or Lloyd Banks release that might lend itself to tales of someone struggling rather than someone established. And since every record is structured to work as a single, there is not the kind of wicked, hookless freestyle, upon which Banks, in part, built his reputation.

The best records here, in no particular order, are The Cake, a song that heavily employs a sample of the phrase "the cake" from the single I Believe by the German rock trio Triumvirat; and Hands Up, in which Banks only sounds uptempo because 50 Cent is providing him with yet another killer club hook, as well as Survival, Gilmores, and Get Clapped, all three of which feature Banks employing the same kind melodic hook 50 Cent popularized. But despite a wealth of support - 50 Cent and company are along for the ride as well as Prodigy, Scarface, 8Ball, Musiq Soulchild, Keri Hilson, and Keon Bryce (as well as Eminem, Havoc, Ron Browz and 9th Wonder, among others, behind the boards), there's simply very little exciting here.