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Blood In My Eye
11/03/2003 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy
Blood in his eye? After the past year, Ja Rule's covered in it, following his dethronement as hip-pop's thug prince by 50 Cent, and savage on-mic beatings from what seems like a cast of thousands. Now the expected response is here, but the Rule's fifth outing quickly betrays its origins as both amateurish payback and fleshed-out EP; besides its two decent singles ("Clap Back" and the Sizzla-sampling "The Crown"), plus the intriguing jazz-soul of "Race Against Time II," Blood is a brief and futile attempt to recover Ja's street bonafides, unwisely trading the proven ear candy that fueled his rise for raw beats and bluster. The salvo culminates in a pair of freestyles that make a point or two about Ja's detractors--"They say I rap to rhythm and blues/but when I turn on the radio/I hear ya'll n---as rappin' it too!"--but quickly degenerate into an embarrassing shouting match that somehow runs out of steam two minutes before "The Wrap" even finishes. It's an appropriate close, however, for an album that consistently comes up short.
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