REVIEW: DJ Whoo Kid & Tony Yayo:Black Friday

Since G-Unit’s inception, it’s been pretty evident that Tony Yayo was the most gutter. His rhymes and subject matter has always been 2 dimensional: guns and drugs. Once G-Unit blew, he stepped his lyrical game up and expanded his rhymes to include ice and women. Real shocker there. But regardless to whom or what I’ve always liked his style. It was raw energy on a record. Gotta love that. But that was then and this is now. Is he still the same Yayo?

Well, on Black Friday Yayo seems to have been inspired with the recent election of Barack Obama. He used audio from two Obama speeches and interviews for skits. Along with the racism intro to the mixtape, I thought that Yayo was gonna take his game to a political level. And he actually did… in his two dimensional way. On “Swagger Like Us” he spoke about the stock dipping, being scared in this economy and trading in his Bentley before rhyming, “Nigga, Yayo for President, I’ll free all the jails out/and buy coke with that 700 billion dollar bailout/the world’s biggest re-up in the Guinness books/I’ll chef up cocaine like a chemist cooks…” Can’t say he didn’t try to sound somewhat intelligent about current events. Kind of like a ghetto male version of Sarah Palin or a thugged out George Bush.

And Tony Yayo on Auto-Tune??? This is the G-Unit member that 50 said would still kill for him. The same dude that was co-signing 50 when he was mocking Ja Rule for singing on records. I don’t care how many dudes he clapped in the hood or how many grams he sold, his use of the “darkside” on “Pop Them Thangs” is inexcusable. 50 I can see using Auto-Tune. Son would make a bestiality porno to keep himself relevant. But Talk Of New York? I was hella let down. Don’t get me started on his failed attempt to harmonize the hook on “Wannabe.”

All said and done, this joint just didn’t do it for me. There were a few dope gutter tracks like “Black Friday,” “Southside To Far Rock” and “1 Shot,” but the limited lyrical content and mediocre freestyles ain’t help. And the use of the T-Pain machine sank Yayo’s mixtape the same way J. Lo sank Ben Affleck’s movie career. Ok, maybe not that bad, but still pretty bad. Hopefully he’ll learn from his mistake and drop some straight drive-by mixtape next go round. -The Infamous O

Hottest Joint: "Southside To Far Rock"

Wackest Joint: "Pop Them Thangs"