If Styles P’s mixtape cuts are stick-ups, his third solo album, Supa Gangsta, is an elaborately planned heist, fully thought out with an attention to detail. It’s full of patented Ghost stories: hard-body threats, knowledge jewels (“I don’t condone it / But how can you if you’ve never been homeless?”) and moral consternation told over a stark update of the dark, creeping NYC sound of the mid-90s, à la Mobb Deep’s Hell On Earth (Loud, 1996).
It’s the most flattering production the D-Block heavy has ever been blessed with. The uneasy guitar line of “Holiday” is reminiscent of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black,” but the rhythm is a post-Timbaland stop-start march for the club.
But all is not bouncy. The majority of Supa Gangsta—including “All I Know Is Pain,” a classic Alchemist beat for the perfect Alchemist foil, and the sinewy “Green Piece of Paper”—unfolds under storm clouds; it’s Styles’ kind of weather. In the face of an ever-evolving pop-rap landscape, his former boss Jimmy Iovine’s disinterest, and, at 33, the uncertain footing of middle age, Styles P has made the album of his career.
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