The problem with building a commercial career around a beef with the mainstream and the success of other artists like LL Cool J is that it doesn’t leave you much room to go once you find yourself riding a minor triumph like the solid New York anthem ‘4-3-2-1’. But in spite of all expectations, Canibus found himself raising the temperature and the bar still further with ‘Second Round K.O’ – a ferocious left-hook of a track that caught the whole hip-hop community off balance and offset one the most brutal verbal conflicts the community had ever seen. Adding weight to the track was none other than Mike Tyson and both the single and the 1998 Wyclef Jean produced album from which it came, ‘Can-I-Bus’ (Universal) went gold. Canibus continued weaving, ducking and blocking with his usual bare-knuckle delivery on the album’s follow-up, the classic Stoupe produced ‘2000BC’ – an album characterised not only by its verbal venom but with the punch it packed with a sound crammed with strings, classical choirs, pianos and relentless beats. On the surface, ‘Hip-Hop For Sale’ suggests its business as usual for the exiled prince of underground. The rhymes are razor-sharp and the delivery still buzzes like a hornet’s nest but there’s a wide-angle lens that takes in a broader view of his messed-up community and sets things straight with a dozen or so tracks of re-invention and super-charged rhetoric. If there’s any one thing though that absorbs any of the blows its the underwhelming and dissapointing production that Nottz (of B.I.G and G-Unit) brings to the ring, lacking as it does the unity, thread and character of ‘Bis’s major offerings.
Resourceful rather than remarkable.