A Mixed Mac

There's a reason why I call tobyMac the master of music, with his work with DC Talk and his incredible solo career. However, the Mac has some trouble here finding his solo identity. First off, 18 tracks is highly impressive, he must have been working on the CD for a few years. But there's one thing I noticed throughout the whole album, an identity crisis, he wanted to not be DC Talk with just one singer, he wanted to be different, this CD is trial, and some of it comes to be error.

There's about 4 highlights, "Somebody's Watching" is a great funky hip-hop track with a gospel singer on background vocals, and the whole track works well. "Love is in the House" is my favorite track being a fusion of rap and pop. "In the Air" is an unique song, being really part conversation set to a beat, and it works well. And finally, the first track, which is a great party song, and seems to be the only harder rock song I liked.

On the other hand, the rest of the songs either don't work i.e. "Irene", or are very hard rock or hip-hop i.e. "J-Train," "What's Goin' Down". If you like the hard rock group RED, you'll like the Mac here. Me? I think it's too over the top, in fact it's WAY over the top. The lyrics point to crimes that are downright disturbing. The problem here is that the album is going to appeal to a younger audience, what are they going to think of the second verse of "What's Goin' Down" where the story of "Susie" is recounted?

After the phenomenon that was DC Talk, Toby felt he had to get away from it as quickly as possible, so do a hard rock/hip-hop/rap record with very little pop. Obviously the experiment didn't work too well as Toby totally shifted away from the hard stuff, and went lighter. He finally found his identity with "Portable Sounds", this album on the other hand is better for I-Tunes.