The Score Review

The correction from the debut is total. They took the production themselves, slowed everything down, brought in guitars and organ and a Caribbean lilt, and made a record that sounds like people playing rather than a machine running. Fu-Gee-La is the best thing here, a loping beat and three verses that hand off perfectly. Ready or Not turns a folk sample into something genuinely ominous.

The Killing Me Softly cover is the reason it sold twenty million and it deserves that, since the arrangement strips the song to a drum loop and a vocal and lets one of the great voices of the decade do the rest. Zealots and How Many Mics keep the rapping honest. The skits are dated and the group broke apart within two years under the weight of what this did. As a record it is warm, generous and close to perfect.