Great Debut by the liquid Emcee

Xzibit’s “At the Speed of Life” marks the beginning of a great MC’s career. Like most good debut albums, it shows the artist’s true thoughts, and not what the crowd wants to hear. You can already see some of that in Xzibit’s sophomore LP 㦔 dayz and 40 nightz”. At the time I heard Xzibit on Snoop’s “B Please”, I didn’t know he had already made 2 great albums… I felt stupid when I found out. Wow. Let’s start..

1) Intro – Grand Opening (not rated) just a dull beat.. I don’t know what this was all about

2) At the speed of life – 10/10 This song has a sample from “Taxi Driver”. Great introspective lyrics here. Incredible beat. This is one of the few songs intelligent songs you can bump in your car. So that’s good news! This song had me captured, I must have listened to it 10 times in a row the first time I heard it. I have to say, Xzibit’s voice is probably the perfect voice for an MC – not annoying, yet rugged, and softer when needed. I really liked the lines “Xzibit lookin at the world through wide angles.. I found a stairway to heaven in the city of Lost Angels”…and “There was a time it was all about beats and rhymes.. but nowadays, the blind just follow the blind..” Good job Xman.

3) Just Maintain (Feat. Hurricane Gee, J-Ro) 6.5/10 I just don’t feel this song. The lyrics are decent, but the beat is lazy, and Hurricane Gee really messes up this one. I love to skip this song! It’s just a horrible follow up to a great title song.

4) Eyes May Shine – 9.5/10 Wow, I love the strings in the beginning of the beat. Then some percussion kicks in, then X’s voice.. I love the beat. The chorus is awesome. Aggressive flow. Maybe not as introspective as “at the speed of life” but nonetheless a great song. These lyrics sound like what Xzibit makes these days. And by the way, this song is 100 times better than the Remix which features Mobb Deep.

5) Positively Negative (Feat. King Tee) - 7.5/10 You can clearly see that Xzibit’s budget for this album was low. The production is simplistic and silly. Imagine two great MC’s rapping about boastful topics over a kid’s beat. Good lyrics. Xzibit and King Tee spit a few short verses. I sorta like how King Tee Says “positively negative, nega-postively nega-positive”, or something like that.

6) Don’t Hate me (interlude) – I love this interlude. Xzibit just talks on this one over a good soft beat, about his homeboys, and his brother Jason, who is in jail for life. Guess what? Paparazzi is next!

7) Paparazzi – 10/10 Wowww This song is the best song I’ve heard from a westcoast MC, ever! Incredible lyricism on this one. The beat is amazing. I wonder if it’s a sample of some classical piece. Surprisingly the sound quality of this track is low! Sounds like a 96k Mp3. I don’t know why they’d make such a mess up, but that made me download the MP3, which was better quality. I guarantee, though, that you’ll absolutely love this song. I don’t even want to type any of the lines here to save the lyrics for your enjoyment. If you haven heard this song already, do it tomorrow!

8) The Foundation – 10/10 Xzibit spits some great lyrics to his son, telling him how to deal with problems, etc. I love this line “let no man ever hold you down or suppress you, the police just arrest you, disrespect you, on occasion take life, by the time you come of age they’ll probably blast on sight”. Simply amazing. All this brilliance is spit over an ever more brilliant piano beat. You can’t help but listen to this track twice in a row each time. You can sense such warmth and love in Xzibit’s voice, and when you realize that he’s talking about guns and violence to his kid, it makes you feel weird…it made me feel weird at least. Then u hear the baby crying…

9) Mrs. Crabtree (Interlude) Meh…another interlude. What’s the point? To fill up track space? The funny thing is, this interlude doesn’t even have anything to do with the next track.

10) Bird’s Eye View (Feat. Hurricane Gee, J-Ro, Ras Kass, Tash) 8.5/10 I gotta say that I was disappointed by this song a little beat. The beat is cool at first, but gets annoying after a while. Can’t help but be disappointed by that. Tash is cool here though. U might like this track but it just doesn’t stand out. I love the hook though.

11) Hit & Run (II) Feat. Ras Kass – 8/10 I’ve never heard the original, but X shows his storytelling skills here. I liked this song, it feels sort of weird. Ras says his famous line “you knew the game, but you still ended up on your back”. I’m a little disappointed that the story itself is told between the verses. But that’s original in a way, so it saves the track.

12) Carry The Weight – 10/10 This song makes me sad every time I hear it. The beat is one of the best I’ve heard. Produced by Thayod Ausar. Ever heard of him? Not me. But it’s simply amazing. The song is definitely one of the best autobiographical raps I’ve ever heard. X to tha Z talks about his depressing childhood, his step parents, the fights, the teenage period, his sister, problems with the police, and alcoholic problems. The title is one of the most fitting titles for a song. This song can get you depressed though, so watch out. Sometimes I skip this one.

13) Plastic Surgery (Feat. Saafir and Ras Kass) – 8.5/10 Very funny! Saafir’s flow is nothing short of humorous. Saafir and X exchange bars about how they’d change people around through plastic sugery. I was disappointed that Ras didn’t shine on this track. I’m giving this track a relatively low rating because this was recorded during Ras’ Golden Age, and you can’t tell by this track. Otherwise this song is very funny. Saafir says “I never wash my hands, the only rubber gloves I wear is on my dic*”. I couldn’t stop laughin.

14) Enemies and Friends – 9/10 This song seems out of place, coming right after “Plastic Surgery”. Xzibit spits some wise lines like “Realize it aint about size or having gats and guns because it only takes one..”. The beat is fairly good. But I can’t say I love it. I really dislike the deep diabolic voice in the background. It seems like it wasn’t meant to be there. Unfortunately underground albums sometimes suffer from these little flaws.

15) Last Words – Words? What words? This sucks!


I have to say that this album includes 4 classic, flawless songs. That’s a lot for one album, especially when there are 4 skits in 15 tracks. I was disappointed by the skits. Why didn’t they just leave them out? People who felt this album from the start are definitely gonna have problems with Xzibit’s recent LP’s “Restless”(2000) and less so, but still substantially with “Man vs. Machine” (2002). Personally, I think Xzibit made a wrong more by joining Dr. Dre’s “affiliation”. His music became a direct contradiction to “paparazzi” and his old fans deserted him, and for a good reason. But I think Xzibit’s 2 major label albums were very refined in terms of production and refinement, and his lyrics were still sharp. I think what really brought his reputation down was his superfluous talk about cars and money. But hey, he sold platinum on both LP’s! At the Speed of Life is like 7 years old and still hasn’t gone Platinum. Let’s hope Xzibit realizes the problems and starts fixing them. He still has a great future, especially if he doesn’t join “Shady Records” which is turning into a pure gimmick, and hopefully the beating he took a few weeks ago won’t affect his rapping. Just think about it. An Xzbit/50 cent collaboration. Won’t that mean the end of the world? What he needs to do, in my opinion is Make his own record label and sign Ras Kass (when he gets out of jail), Saafir, and his old Likwit pals. It would be a dream come true if Canibus were to join. I think the best hip hop group ever would consist of Ras Kass, Xzibit, and Canibus. But that’s just my opinion. Well, on an ending note, I have to rate this right? It’s a difficult choice because this album seems more like a 4.5 to me. There are gems and there are rocks.. and the interludes really kill it. I think I’ll rate it 5 stars, so maybe if X reads this, he’ll make another one like this…