Lil' Romeo: Lil' Romeo

Dirty South hustler Master P and Bad Boy wheeler-dealer Sean "P. Diddy" Combs come from different worlds, but both played major, largely negative roles in determining the course of hip-hop in the '90s. P. Diddy's crimes against hip-hop are well known; the consummate East Coast insider's influence took the genre's money fetish to surreal heights while setting the art of sampling back decades. Meanwhile, P helped popularize Southern rap through No Limit Records, a label known as much for its gaudy, Pen And Pixel album covers and assembly-line production technique as for the negligible quality of its music. Once powerhouses, Bad Boy and No Limit have struggled of late, the victims of overexposure and changing commercial trends. But rather than bow out gracefully, P chases one of hip-hop's sillier recent trends with Lil' Romeo, the debut of his 11-year-old son. While Lil' Romeo sets its sights on the lucrative kiddie market, its first single ("My Baby") takes a page from the P. Diddy handbook by grounding its depiction of the joys and sorrows of a pre-pubescent Lothario in the chorus of The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." But "My Baby" is a work of DJ Premier-like sophistication when compared to "Make You Dance," which borrows Shaggy's none-too-subtle co-opting of "Angel Of The Morning," then throws in a huge chunk of "That's The Way (I Like It)" for good measure. Lil' Romeo's screechy, high-pitched voice makes Lil' Romeo sound like a Master P album performed by Alvin And The Chipmunks, but where his father's rhymes are littered with criminal behavior and illicit drugs, Lil' Romeo largely sticks to PG-rated subject matter. Even P gets into the family-friendly act, putting aside urgent concerns like checking his crack house and warning listeners that "Some Of These Hoes Jack" to counsel Romeo to stay in school and not use drugs. While Lil' Romeo's squeaky-clean rhymes (some of which boast of his above-average GPA) lend the album a welcome innocence, Lil' Romeo is mostly just standard-issue Master P product: padded and busy, indifferently produced, and lyrically undernourished. It's difficult to say which is more dispiriting: that Romeo aspires to be nothing more than the poor man's Lil' Bow Wow, or that he fails to achieve such a modest goal. Modesty is a word seldom used to describe the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy, under whose reign mainstream hip-hop became as big and dumb as a Las Vegas stage show. As a producer, mogul, and icon, P. Diddy has left an indelible mark on popular culture, but on the mic, he's an eternal amateur, forever sounding like a slumming executive enrolled in the world's longest hip-hop fantasy camp. Much has been made of P. Diddy's vow to change his ways following his recent legal troubles, but The Saga Continues pretty much sticks to the Bad Boy formula, with materialistic rhymes that emanate brusque street swagger and beats that aim squarely for the dance floor. P. Diddy's last album, Forever, enlisted a small nation's worth of outside ringers, but The Saga Continues finds P. Diddy keeping it in the family, showcasing the Bad Boy roster, particularly Black Rob, G. Dep, and Mark Curry, all of whom consistently upstage their mealy-mouthed boss. P. Diddy's tough-guy posturing is as laughable as ever—it's all but impossible to respect a guy who brags about the checks he cuts for his ghostwriters—but his instinct for what gets bodies moving remains strong. The P. Diddy-free "Blast Off" and Kokane-assisted "Lonely" take Afrika Bambaataa-style electro-funk to shiny new places, while the Faith Evans/Carl Thomas collaboration "Emotional" is a solid piece of hip-hop soul built around Dr. Dre's sinister, hypnotic beat for The Firm's "Phone Tap." References to P. Diddy's recent scandals pop up throughout, but nowhere does the mogul-turned-rapper seem more vulnerable than on "I Need A Girl," in which the Puffster pledges his love for Jennifer Lopez with the slightly pathetic earnestness of a junior-high jock penning his first love letter. Though The Saga Continues marks a step up from the abysmal Forever, P. Diddy is still peddling some of the flashiest, biggest-budgeted mediocrity around.