Chamillionaire

Emboldened by "Ridin'" (2006's runaway hit that surveyed police profiling), Chamillionaire takes aim at racial inequality, black poverty, pop culture vapidity, Bill O'Reilly and the failure of the American educational system. And that's just the first track. Chamillionaire's quick, crunchy flow and home-fried take on NYC lyricism complement the themes' heft, and the production throughout is alternately quirky ("Industry Groupie" samples Europe's "The Final Countdown") and caustic, providing an H-Town spin on the Bomb Squad's style of dense, rock-inflected soundscapes. All in all, excellent.

For someone who scored one of the biggest hits in recent memory with 2005's "Ridin'" --
which earned the Houston MC a Grammy and sold more ringtones than any song in history
– Chamillionaire sounds awfully grumpy. "Money don't do nothing but bring you trouble,"
he says in the lead-in to "I Think I Love You," a tragic tale where cash is the object of the
rapper's affection. It's a recurring sentiment on Cham's second disc, on which h... More >