Alvin Nathaniel Joiner IV suspends his holiday on colossal MTV hit, ‘Pimp My Ride’ to indulge his love of the underground with new album ‘Full Circle’ – a solid and fairly audacious addition to his catalogue of crime that whilst not specialising in exhausts, is fairly exhausting nevertheless, covering as it does the many evils and absurdities of living in the 21st Century. Politics, police-brutality, the Taliban, afternoon talk shows, paternity testing, cars, sex and more than a smidgen of violence – its all in there, but if ‘Full Circle’ is the chin-stroking, sober debate its press-folk purport it to be, then Dick Cheney’s ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ must have been a manifesto for peace. In the spirit of the tough-talking, expletive-popping gansta-bling culture it alleges to soar over, it’s a record that risks the fat, heavy beats of tracks like ‘Say It To My Face’ (ft. Kurupt & Don Blaze) beneath some fairly robust 12-gauge threats to all those fork-tongue, half-ass niggaz who challenge the right of one man to have any kind of meaningful relationship with any man. In some ways it’s a bit like grabbing the mic of your average queer-bashing MC and bashing him over the head with i: Kurupt and Donell Blaze turning the blade back on those first willing to pull it; using the same language, the violence, but for nobler objectives: About-Face Reversal. Full circle.
It’s a satisfying return to form from the former Likwit member; imaginative, boundary-pushing, genre-bending, shape shifting and offering no end of stylistic approaches within a fairly tight and focused remit. Only ‘On Bail’ and ‘Family Values’ fail to really deliver, indulging as they do the usual soul samples and middle-eastern sound bazaars.
Recorded in New York and Los Angeles with Keith Shocklee of the Bomb Squad sitting in as co-producer, it’s a bi-coastal effort in every sense of the word.