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Ying Yang Twins Album Review: UNITED STATES OF ATLANTA

:”All good things must come to an end….All Bad things can’t wait to begin..” - Ying Yang Twins, “All Good Things (Intro)

Ironic how the intro of the Ying Yang Twins new album titled U.S.A. or UNITED STATES OF ATLANTA may foreshadow things to come for Ying Yang. Right now Ying Yang is as hot as they’ve ever been in their life thanks to a truly genius video featuring about 100 fine chics and a catchy gimmick in which they actually whisper throughout the whole song in the song called “Wait (The Whisper Song)”. I’ve never seen a more erotic video than this one. And to this day I can’t get enough of the video. The way it was directed is pure genius and you gotta give it to Kane and D-Roc for coming up with that whisper gimmick. People are already copying the gimmick as I type. So with this video everyone and their grandma know or will soon know who the Ying Yang twins are. But “all good things must come to an end….And all bad things can’t wait to begin”. See their album doesn’t come even close to living up to the buzz their first single “Wait” has created. The album will probably sell big on the strength of “Wait” but a lot of true Ying Yang Twins fans are gonna be mad at this album and their next album won’t get bought as the extra commercial heads that flock to this album won’t flock to their next one because they aren’t the true fans that have been with Ying Yang from the beginning. Now mind you this sad news is coming from someone who used to be a HUGE Ying Yang Twins fan. I was a fan ever since “Whistle While You Twerk’.

The song and others like it that they made reminded me of the Florida Bass music I grew up on back in the day that groups like Magic Mike, Poison Clan, Clay-D, 69 Boyz and 2-Live Crew made famous. But ever since Lil Jon invented crunk music people stopped making that old school bass music that I fell in love with in college at FAMU. So the Ying Yang Twins were kind of hero’s to me because they were keeping the Florida Bass tradition alive. And their last album ME AND MY BROTHER was a great album and the best one they had made to date. So once I saw how fly the video for “Wait” was and then heard that the title of their album was going to be UNITED STATES OF ATLANTA I got super excited cause the title was so fly. I just knew my boys were going to give me more bass vibes to groove to on the way to the club and after the club. But this album is TOTALLY different from anything they’ve ever made. They decided this time around to showcase their gentler/softer side which will go over great with a few ladies and radio stations but the true Ying Yang Twins fans are gonna end up with the “screw face” all mad and stuff once they sample this album like I did. I honestly was shocked. Let’s delve into this debacle of an album and I’ll show you what I’m talking about….

Everyone’s been downloaded “Wait” from the internet by now since Ying Yang took so long to come out with the album. So I won’t talk anymore about that song. Picking up where “Wait” left off though is “Pull My Hair”; another simple yet effective song that’ll go over well with most despite the juvenile raunchy lyrics and chorus. After “Pull My Hair” you can get your party on for real with “Put That Thang Down” and “Shake”. Of course there’s even the “Wait” remix most have heard by now featuring Missy Elliot, Lil Scrappy, Free & Mr. ColliPark. Ying Yang even sneaks in some solid non-party songs like “F*** Ying Yang Twins”, “Ghetto Classics” and “U.S.A.”. But that’s where the positives end for the album.

There are a lot of “imposter” party songs on here that are just either extremely average or pretty much wack. Those would be “Hoes”, “The Walk”, and worst of all “Badd’ featuring that bad artist Mike Jones (bad meaning bad not good). Shockingly they already have a video for “Badd” trying to cash in on the whole Mike Jones “10 minutes of fame” period. So OK whatever. I can kind of deal with these imposter party tracks but more disturbing is that the rest of the album is pretty much dedicated to R&B tracks. R&B TRACKS!!! YUCK!! YUCK!! YUCK!! I did not buy Ying Yang to listen to garbage, mellow R&B tracks! The only songs out of the R&B songs I can kind of go along with is “Long Time” because it’s a sincere song about their religion. That’s cool. Respect. But them other songs gotta go. To Ying Yang’s credit they do try to address some POSITIVE topics in some of those R&B songs like the injustices that occur during incarceration and the struggles some women go through just trying to live. But let’s be real. Ying Yang Twins aren’t exactly the most articulate rappers out there. They need to stick to what they know; Party tracks with the occasional social commentary song in between.

I mean they spread themselves too thin on this album trying to cover every topic known to man. So much so that they didn’t even get most of the party songs right. This album is a slap in my face because it sells out the true fans of Ying Yang Twins like myself. Again this album will probably sell due to the buzz of “Wait” and there a lot of songs on here with “commercial appeal”. But people who buy this album will end up mad for the most part which means their next album might be there last. They better get all their money NOW while they can and tour all they can NOW cause there’s gonna be a lot of mad people out there wanting their $15 back for buying this R&B album.

Benz0
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