In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 Review

Made in the wake of a friend's death and a label's demand for hits, this is the sound of a writer being pulled in two directions. The rapping is unimpeachable. Where I'm From is a four minute census of a housing project delivered without a hook, and it is one of the best verses of the era. You Must Love Me is a confession about shooting his own brother, told plainly.

Streets Is Watching sets the paranoia in a groove. Against all that sit the singles, glossy productions with borrowed 1980s hooks and a chorus strategy aimed squarely at radio, and they date the album badly. Sunshine is the low point of his first decade. The record never settles on what it wants to be, which is why it is remembered as the awkward one. Listen past the singles and the writing is arguably sharper than the debut's. The album built around it is not.