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But it’s not Akir’s tired political message that ultimately sinks LEGACY. You could ignore the political crap but for the fact that the major difficulty here is that Akir --- an acronym for “Always Keepin’ It Real” --- doesn’t; there are so many guest appearances and producers that Akir’s presence gets lost on his own disc. Six producers over the course of nineteen tracks, and an executive producer who is somehow supposed to produce some cohesiveness on this project. Good luck. Between the message and the medium --- bearing titles such as “Kunta Kinte,” “Politricks,” and “No Longer My Home” --- and seven guest appearances, this could have been a label sampler.

Akir occasionally hits the mark creatively --- “Treason” is somewhat catchy, and yeah, yeah, I know, he means to be serious, to be relevant, but Chuck D, in the heyday of Public Enemy, understood that you could be serious (even if you were full of shit) without sacrificing the entertainment value of what you were doing. And it’s the entertainment value that’s the hook, no matter how badly you want to communicate your message. If you’re not entertaining, wha’chu doin’ releasing a CD? And it’s ironic, but the most telling track on LEGACY is “Kunta Kinte,” a skit involving a street encounter between a sidewalk hustler and a teacher. Akir makes a point here, but it’s not the one he wants to make. He merely demonstrates how far off the mark the rest of this disc is.