Album Review: Crucial Conflict

Crucial Conflict
Planet Crucon- Buckwild
Raiting: 2/10


From the moment I saw the album in Best Buy I had a bad feeling about Crucial Conflict’s fourth studio effort Planet Crucon. For starters, the album art is pretty ridiculous; the cover features the group’s four members posing in front of a planet, presumably “Planet Crucon,” which appears to be some weird hybrid of Mars and the Sun. On the back cover, next to the track list (which is a joke in itself and features hilarious song titles like Wangin’), is a portrait of the four members dressed up in a combination of space alien garb and standard gangster clothing.

Unfortunately, the complete insanity isn’t limited to the album art. The record’s opening track, Planet Crucon, sounds like it was produced with multiple variations of the same dial tone. The previously mentioned Wangin’ is even worse. The song’s hook features the same obnoxiously deepened voice originally made famous by the Disturbing Tha Peace rapper 1-20. In fact, as the song progresses on, the track really begins to sound like it belongs on a Ludacris b-side collection.

The tracks that follow on Planet Crucon contain lyrics heavily laced with standby hip hop themes; the complications of hustling and drug dealing are addressed in City Streets, a track that channels Memphis rap crew Three 6 Mafia. Additionally, the glories of pimping are conveyed in the hook-driven track Guess I’m a Pimp.

Throughout all of the generic hip hop however, Planet Crucon does manage to produce at least a few decent tracks. One example of a stand out track on the album is By the Time which features a hook sung by funk legend George Clinton. Following By the Time is one of the album’s more serious tracks, Change. On Change, Crucial Conflict really perfects the balance between the song’s beat and the individual rappers’ flow. Unfortunately however, these two highlights just aren’t enough to bail out the rest of the record. After Change, the album degenerates back into the ring tone beats and terrible flows that make up the body of Planet Crucon.

My biggest qualm with Planet Crucon is that it does a poor job of showcasing the talents of Crucial Conflict’s individual members. For example, multiple members of Crucial Conflict excel at maintaining an exceptional flow. This talent is rarely showcased on the record. In addition, the group is very good at timing their hooks. But unfortunately, while their hooks are well-produced, they lack any meaningful lyrical content whatsoever.

The members of Crucial Conflict were pioneers in Chicago’s hip hop explosion. Along with artists like Common, Da Brat and R. Kelly Crucial Conflict paved the way for other Chicago rappers to make it in the music industry. But today, Crucial Conflict appears to be shell of its former self. Instead of maintaining their 90’s underground sound, Crucial Conflict opted to sell out their unique music in order to make something that was playable on mainstream radio. As it stands today, Crucial Conflict is faced with a truly crucial conflict; do they want to be remembered alongside the cheapened and generic hip hop found on MTV? Or, will they opt to be recognized primarily as pioneers of the Chicago hip hop revolution? Unfortunately, Planet Crucon seems to indicate the former.