Damu Ridas II - How Deep Is Your Hood

the take

Y'know, it's no secret that gangsta rap been out of the mainstream spotlight by the end of the 20th century following the deaths of both The Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. And honestly, the subgenre had reached a point that it had gotten stale due to everybody and their son/pops/nephew/mama/auntie and everyone else in between was recording gangsta rap, heavily diluting it. So for the Bloods to release this at a time where violent crime in Los Angeles slowly started to decrease, as well as the oversaturation of gangsta rap plus the unfortunate circumstances, it's difficult for the gang to drop something that's at least a new take on the topic at hand. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen at all with their follow-up, "How Deep Is Your Hood". The lyricism is your typical surface-level B's up bangin' on wax stuff, which on its own already offers little substantially. Hearing how much someone doesn't like their opps and offers to take them out of this world is already basic as it is, but I guess with them being straightforward is the route they wanted to go. I guess the craziest part of this album (and why I find myself not really liking this as much as the first installment) is because of how dated the music sounds on here. For an album that was released in the late-90's, the beats on here sound like they were stuck in 1993 when the group first burst on the scene. It's clear that the production on here is really uninspired, reusing samples from earlier works on here and expecting similar results ("results" being decent tracks) and ended up falling flat. Hell, it's so bad that the Bloods essentially reused a beat from the first "Bangin on Wax" album (if I remember correctly, I think it's "Rip a Crab in Half") for the song "Day in a Life", which sounds a bit too half-assed to me. I will admit that "Damu Ridas II - How Deep Is Your Hood" did have some potential to being good enough to listen to, but the way the Bloods squandered said potential is astonishing, which is a shame.