Tru: Da Crime Family

Like fellow hip-hop magnate Sean "Puffy" Combs, Master P has always enjoyed success that seems unrelated to his skills as a rapper. More a showman, businessman, and icon than an artist, P has nevertheless translated his unremarkable rhyming skills, nonexistent acting skills, and questionable filmmaking skills into household-name-sized fame and a vast fortune. The No Limit kingpin announced his retirement as a solo artist after last year's MP Da Last Don, but, like Sugar Ray Leonard, Too $hort, and Michael Jordan before him, he just can't seem to stay away, and P has teamed up once again with brothers Silkk The Shocker and C-Murder as No Limit supergroup Tru. Da Crime Family, at two discs and 29 tracks, wears out its welcome early on but sludges along interminably for what seems like hours and hours, shamelessly reveling in gangsta-rap cliches, bad Al Pacino impersonations, and more cheesy, karaoke-style R&B choruses than you can shake a talking Master P doll at. (The talking Master P doll, which utters just two of P's beloved catch phrases, "Uhhhh" and "Na-Na Na-Nah," is about as multidimensional and unpredictable as most of Da Crime Family.) A few moments find P and Shocker showing a level of depth and maturity not found in most of their previous work, but those always seem to be undermined by grunting choruses, lazy production, and shameless gangsta posturing. Its length reflecting not so much an unyielding, Fassbinder-like level of delirious, constant inspiration as a lack of quality control, Da Crime Family is way too much of a crappy thing. Slightly less obnoxious but still worthless is Who U Wit, yet another No Limit compilation, this time a concept album that finds Master P and his No Limit associates waxing overly enthusiastic about one of P's many, many extra-musical endeavors: professional basketball. Padded out with plenty of that trademark No Limit filler, including four versions of P's uninspired-to-begin-with would-be anthem "B-Ball," Who U Wit proves that boasting about one's basketball skills can be every bit as tiresome as boasting about one's skills as a rapper, pimp, or drug dealer. And while the No Limit crew's in-your-face basketball boasting might be legitimate—the team recently delivered a vicious beating to David Byrne's Luaka Bop team in the inter-label basketball league, with Silkk The Shocker delivering a brutal late-period dunk over members of Geggy Tah—Who U Wit's good material could barely sustain a skimpy EP, much less an 18-track album.