Album: Redman

Malpractice, Def Jam

Since starting his career with 1992's Whut? Thee Album, Redman has carved himself a nice little niche in the hip hop bullpen as a cartoonish caricature of dope-smoking mischief, most agreeable when teamed with the gruff lisp of Method Man. So it continues on this fifth outing of "def poetry far beyond my control", which finds the New Jersey rapper claiming "When I was young I shot up Toys 'R' Us", and boasting how he "puffed so much of that green I bleed guacamole". Drawing heavily on the George Clinton loop archive for tracks like "Diggy Doc" and "Doggz II", and with old pal Erick Sermon laying down grooves as infectious as "Lick A Shot", Malpractice is stuffed with the kind of irresistible party anthems that seem designed as much for sports utility vehicles to dance to as humans – a tendency that reaches new heights (depths?) with the ludicrous, gigantic synth-bass riff that powers the single "Let's Get Dirty". Rarely a cut goes by without an opportunity for raucous call-and-response, although it's Redman's guests who provide the album's lyrical extremes, with George Clinton's enjoyably surreal mutterings about some "nasty monkey" balanced elsewhere by Scarface's revolting insult likening his victim to "a discharge from a dick disease". Just as unwelcome, though, are the numerous dreary "comedy" interludes like "Jerry Swinger Stickup", the recurrent punchline to which seems to be just gunfire. Which wasn't funny when Ice Cube first did it a decade ago, and hasn't grown any more amusing in the intervening years.