New Boyz: Too Cool To Care

When your rap rep is based more on the tightness of your pants than your lyrical prowess, it’s safe to say that the bar of creative expectations sits low. But New Boyz’s Legacy and Ben J still come up short with Too Cool To Care, a stylistically scattershot bag of pop-rap misfires that outs the record’s title as a hollow boast. New Boyz’s ambition pays off on the opener, “Tough Kids,” where squealing guitar, lurching bass, and aggro-rapping result in a thrashing top-o’-the-world banger. But it’s all downhill from there, as the Boyz try out a dozen different looks in an attempt to dress up their vapid style into something resembling substance. They borrow Black Eyed Peas’ electro pulse for “Backseat,” ape latter-day Blink-182 with the cloying synth-punk of “Meet My Mom,” and do Auto-Tuned R&B with Chris Brown on “Better With The Lights Off.” They also dip into the minimal 808s-and-snares beatwork of their debut with “Crush On You,” placing too much attention on shoddy verses rife with bad rhymes and worse penis jokes. Priapic obsession might be Too Cool’s only consistent thread; Ben J even brags about needing “a Twitter for my dick” on “Start Me Up.” Pity Too Cool To Care isn’t nearly as eloquent.