ummmm man to be honest i think he'll do decent numbers and the west will embrace him, but its sad because xzibit just dropped one of the best albums of the year and no one will give a rip or paya ttention, although "judgement day" could be his "why"....
the thing that bothers me, personal tastes aside, is that the west thinks that we need gangsta rap to get the west back on top; we're eally stuck on the past glory thing like nobodies business. Westside Connection and all that, but we need someone who is simply a good artist who can connect with the people. thats it. both our underground artists and our commercial artists maintain somewhat of a superficial attitude. dilated doesnt really make "meaningful" songs, neither do jay 5- and when they do it generally isnt their best work. we have a strong "purist" movement- b boy culture is high in certain spots, and then there is the gangsta element that pervades mostly....
and neither of these are going ressurect the west to a prominant role. game is trying to hard already to be hard. we already know he wasnt "really" a gangsta (since when did they do "blind date"?) and that card has already been exposed.... he's not a bad mc to me, he's ok, nothing to write home about though and he aint killin nobody lyrically, but he has the strongest team around him so he should succeed. the problem is, we dont need another gangsta movement. we need to move the fuck on and do somehting else instead of trying to hang our hat on NWA and Deathrows dominance from a decade ago.
xzibit is a good start and provides a grea tbalance to all of these elements but nobody will notice him, as usual.
