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Okay, pretentious as Theater of the Mind might sound, don’t judge a book, well, an album by its cover. One of the South’s favorite sons, Ludacris is back and has managed to crush the elements of his older works with a good dose of intelligence and wit found on Release Therapy.
Being a theater concept album, many non-musical celebrities are making cameos on these tracks. It doesn’t hurt the album because they seriously don’t try to rap! Left to Luda, you can see the benefits on cuts like Undisputed, which “co-stars” former boxing champion Floyd Mayweather in a drowned (but far from dead) cut with comparisons and punchlines.
Some would watch Wish You Would, the collaboration with former rival TI, and the creaming in their pants, but while they deliver mediocre lyrics at worst, the pace provided by Toomp and 8TRIX is a headache. Chris Brown and Sean Garrett’s collaboration, What Them Girls Like, is even more trashy – yes, it’s obviously a club / radio song, so you can bounce back from it, but don’t go for quality, although Ludacris drops a few decent lines, except “I love women so much that I am one!” … um … move on …
Despite them there is so much to say about the last three tracks on the album so I’ll spare you that and tell you this – MVP (“ tagged ” by DJ Premier; yeah who thought that wouldn’t happen , but it did), I Do It For Hip Hop (‘co-starring’ Nas & Jay-Z), and Do The Right Thang (‘co-starring’ Common and, how well, Spike Lee and ‘ marked ‘by 9th Wonder) – yes the quality of the leads matches the names involved in this triple threat … I mean treat. Believe it.
You have to love concept albums, as long as they’re good enough. Aside from the actor cameos (also from Chris Rock and Ving Rhames) and the ‘co-starring’ and ‘tagged by’ credits, Ludacris’ Spirit Theater is not the one that remains. Really topical in that this is a concept album, but regardless it still packs a lot of oomph and you’ll get a lot of kicks from it as well. Definitely a must.
Available via DTP / Def Jam Records
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Source by Vlad Iouchkov
