Xzibit - Weapons Of Mass Destruction
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Xzibit - Weapons of Mass Destruction
(Monday December 13, 2004 5:44 PM
)
Released on 06/12/04
Label: Columbia
Where Vietnam had Bob Dylan and Edwin Starr, the promptest and loudest mainstream musical response to Iraq has been from rappers. Eminem’s "Mosh" brought anti-war fulmination out of the coffee shop and onto MTV and now "Pimp My Ride" host Xzibit marches forth on the Billboard Charts in an attempt to promote pacifist policies through bone-shaking West Coast gangsta rap - with unintentionally hilarious results.
Xzibit may have been troubled by Bush Jnr’s belligerent foreign policy but he’s not about to question his own fondness for firearms. This fifth full length album opens with "State Of The Union" a sample of a genuine war-justifying Bush speech, diced and mixed by producer Thayod Ausar to run along the lines of “The tyrant is me/I will kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people”. Yet before long, on "LAX", Alvin Nathaniel Joiner is waging his own “war”, shooting foes in the face and boasting “One man one gun/How the West was won”. And, oops, he said ‘faggot’.
Then there’s the bleeding heart "Cold World", a solemn triptych of token hard-done-bys: the sexually-harassed female (he probably knows a few), innocent-kiddie-turned-drug-dealer and – topically - a little Iraqi boy dodging US bombs. Baghdad: it’s rough. Hot on its raw, bleeding heels, boring party track "Saturday Night Live" sees X and a posse of “mercenaries and assassins” dressed in “khakis and airforce ones” heading for a club to “f*ck some muthaf*ckin hos” and see some serious gun-toting action. LA: just like Baghdad but with better trainers.
Ethical incontinence notwithstanding, Xzibit is an undeniably charismatic vocalist, with a gift for pure, jolting, testosterone-packed aggression that leads to some rather magnificent moments: thuggish head-nodder "Muthaf*cker"’s powerful descending chorus sounds like a...
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