Project Pat - You Like 2006
Project Pat - Crack A Head 2006
Frayser Boy - Intro: Me Being Me 2005

Buy Crook By the Book
As you scramble to keep up with the fourth quarter major label rap bombardment, don’t let Project Pat’s Crook By The Book: The Fed Story fly under the radar.

Tom Breihan Tomzino beat me to the punch, pretty much saying everything I had to say about both Crook and Z-Ro’s equally phenomenal (and similarly bleak) I’m Still Livin. Pat’s still a gangster caricature, ridiculous and ignorant as the rest of HCP, but post-incarceration Pat has a maturity about him and Crook isn’t as silly as expected. Kind of reminds me of Juvenile’s Project English, which has a sort of damn-it’s-real-wild-out-here vibe. Not that that’s a bad thing. HCP’s come a long way from rapping about magic and vampires; Juicy J and DJ Paul have made themselves into North North’s ambassador to Hollywood, Pat is now spitting gravely wisdom, and Lil Wyte and Frayser Boy are sharp enough on the mic to make up for a decade of Crunchy Black.

Juice and Paul have been leaning more heavily on the soul samples as of late, and Crook follows the trend. Even if they aren’t getting their fingers too dusty with their sources, they’ve revitalized their sound with the soul obsession. When they borrow from something Memphis, it’s poetic. “You Like” is pretty nice in that respect, as is “What Money Do”. But as we hear on “Crack A Head”, they haven’t turned on their earlier buckwild vampire style. Sometimes it’s monotonous (”Purple” is pretty weak, even with Beanie Mack on the guest vocals), but Paul and J generally don’t fuck up. They actually recycled the whistle from Frayser Boy’s intro to Me Being Me for “Crack A Head”, but that was an unreasonably substantial track wasted on an intro.

I don’t really know what to say about the intro to “You Like” other than Wow. Please post your theories for how this came about in the comments section.

Official Project Pat Site

(pic borrowed from DJ Benzi. go cop the product so we can get more ridonk promo shots.)