Str8jakkett

Way back in '94/I was writin' all my flows for 2000, D.L. rapped on DVS Mindz' essential collection Million Dolla Broke Niggaz. On Mood Swings, D.L.'s DVS crewmate Str8jakkett puts his own twist on this space-time connection. His rhymes might be ahead of their time, but many of his beats sound like they've been sitting on the shelf for at least a decade. This Topeka MC gets deeper than blind fish, combining inventive boasts with starkly honest self-analysis and graphic sex talk (he rhymes money shots with runny snot), but his vivid imagery occasionally sinks into the abyss of yawning synthesized beats. On the plus side of the production ledger, Kansas City's SG donates the disc's best backdrops, and he even drops a solid verse over his own grimy piano-and-thump loop during the standout posse cut "Short Bus." The club banger "Shake It Off," on which DJ Retroblast and D.O.P.E. collaborate, is fueled by electronic bass blasts and sets Str8's delivery sprinting to keep pace. Absent from wax for some time, Str8 clearly wanted to return with a full slate, but at 78 minutes, Mood Swings runs a few tracks too long and includes the standard rap-album filler: voice-mail messages, a bank-robbery skit and a fake live radio spot from "DJ Dick Goesinya at Club Nutsack."