Xzibit: Restless

A ferocious battle-rapper, dark-humored misanthrope, and reality-rap griot, Xzibit received a huge break when Dr. Dre tapped him for a series of high-profile appearances, first on Snoop Dogg's "Bitch Please" and later on Dr. Dre 2001. Within a matter of months, Xzibit—a longtime member of the Likwit Crew, alongside King Tee, Defari, and Tha Alkaholiks—went from underrated to overexposed, becoming so ubiquitous that for a while hip-hop albums seemed legally obligated to feature either him or the equally omnipresent Redman. But the real test of Xzibit's star power comes with his long-awaited Restless, his first album since Dre catapulted him from underground admiration to mainstream stardom. Executive producer Dre only worked on three tracks, but Restless bears his fingerprints throughout, trading in the gloomy, gothic sound of Xzibit's superb first two albums for heaps of state-of-the-art second-generation G-funk courtesy of producers such as DJ Quik, Battlecat, and Soopafly. The thematic scope of Xzibit's work has changed, too. Stardom creates distance, not just physically but socially and emotionally, and as a result, the social commentary and street-level reporting that set his other albums apart are largely absent from Restless. Where Xzibit once rapped about navigating the streets from the perspective of someone just barely able to survive through legal means, here he teams with Eminem to rap convincingly about the perils of fame. Restless isn't quite the metatextual running commentary on fame and persecution that The Marshall Mathers LP is, but, like Eminem, Xzibit has gone from addressing the dire circumstances that created him to focusing squarely on life as a rap star. With the swaggering first single "X," Dr. Dre has even outfitted the rapper with one of his star-making specialties, the sure-shot single that doubles as a public coming-out party. The tracks featuring Dre, Eminem, and Snoop Dogg may attract more attention, but Xzibit is at his best rapping alongside Tha Liks, whose Erick Sermon-produced collaboration with X, the bluntly titled "Alkaholik," effortlessly reaches the giddy heights of past efforts "Bird's Eye View" and "Let It Reign." A weak patch roughly halfway in slows it down, but Restless accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: It consolidates Xzibit's new fan base while retaining enough classic flavor to avoid alienating Likwit Crew diehards.