It wasn't easy being a West Coast gangsta rapper at the end of the '90s.
Mack 10 will tell you that. Between 1995 and 1997, around the time "Foe Life" and "Backyard Boogie" were blowing up and
Mack was putting it down for Cali with
Ice Cube and
WC on the
Westside Connection album, everything was great --
Mack was on top of the game. But his career simmered out -- like nearly every other West Coast rapper's career -- following the Death Row empire's demise. Suddenly, around 1999/2000, the rap community seemed to view
Mack with indifference. His
Paper Route album (2000) was his least successful and his record deal with Priority had gone sour. Then, along came Cash Money Records, looking to extend its empire from the South to the West Coast -- much like No Limit had done unsuccessfully with
Snoop Dogg a few years earlier. The resulting album,
Bang or Ball, features
Mack rapping alongside
the Cash Money Millionaires over
Mannie Fresh productions. It's somewhat of a strange pairing -- West Coast gangsta rap and the Dirty South. The synthesis works surprisingly well -- certainly better than
Snoop's No Limit collaborations.
Mack sounds comfortable dropping rhymes over
Fresh's beats and sounds at home alongside
the Big Tymers, in particular, rapping about the usual gangsta topics: sex, cars, drugs, money, player haters, boasting, and so on. "Hate in Yo Eyes," a
Dr. Dre and Scott Storch track that interpolates "Stayin' Alive" for the hook, really helps
Bang or Ball. It's one of
Dre and Storch's better efforts and really starts the album off with plenty of club-ready energy. "Connected for Life," featuring
Ice Cube,
WC, and
Butch Cassidy, is another obvious highlight. But the abundance of
Fresh productions doesn't help
Bang or Ball. Most of the in-house Cash Money producer's beats are great -- not really West Coast and definitely not Dirty South, but instead somewhere between the two. However, a few more outside productions like the
Dre track would bring some more diversity to this album. And that's really what's lacking here. By the time you hit the halfway mark, the album begins to sound a bit monotonous. Still,
Bang or Ball is an engaging listen, especially the first time through. Even by the time this album came out in 2001, there hadn't been many collaborations between the West Coast and the South, and surely none this ambitious and this high-profile. Give both
Mack and
the Cash Money Millionaires credit for taking a chance. ~ Jason Birchmeier