Mystikal

On his first album recorded for No Limit, Mystikal takes full advantage of the rapper-filled Tank, enlisting many of his label-mates for numerous collaborations. Master P, Snoop Dogg, Silkk The Shocker, and Mia X all appear, as well as Bay Area players E-40 and B-Legit. "Gangstas" and "Ain't No Limit" are both standouts.

The only No Limit rapper with a style worth talking about fires the words rough and fast, like a dancehall toaster without Jamaica, or Busta Rhymes without a sense of humor. Its boasts, doubts, and recriminations clearly audible through the gravelly buckshot of the rap, its only humanizing inflections Bernie Worrell-style hooks that hover eerily above the subwoofer boom, the CD remains unbearably intense well past the usual N.O. breaking point, leaving Mystikal one of the rare gangstas whose regrets seem powered by anything deeper than self-pity--a brush with the demonic, say. And it adds a killer emotional twist by going out on what sounds like a home-recorded vocal chorus by the dead sister whose murder he'd promised to revenge an hour before. (Grade - A-)