Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

The Pottymou-, er, the Kottonmouth Kings might be easily dismissed as another bunch of droopy pants, white boy stoners, whose be all and end all for existence would go up in, uh, smoke if marijuana was ever legalized, except for the fact that once you get past their obsession for weed and pseudo-hostility, there are some interesting things going on. Settling somewhere in between D12 and Eminem, mining an area of hardcore and rock that leaves Limp Bizcuit looking like ballsless castrati, one simply cannot ignore these guys, despite the sophomoric levels their lyrics often plumb. For instance, I swear that the sample which "Sleeps" is built upon is from "Stop Stop Stop" by The Hollies.  And so help me, "4-2-0" is so infectious a rap sing-a-long that it's hard not to bop along to it, even as one eschews the irresponsibility of the lifestyle which they extoll.

What is interesting, however, isn't the rap and hip-hop joints that these guys drop, even though that would be quite enough. No, you get hammered and jacked upside the head for the first 15 minutes or so, when they hit you from an entirely different direction. "Positive Vibes" grafts a summertime groove onto a hip-hop groove that, with a little lyrical modification, is just light and catchy enough to be played everywhere from Nickelodeon to church services. A couple of these guys can almost sing. And when was the last time you heard someone on a rap track doing rounds?  This, of course, is followed by the hardcore "Zero Tolerance" just to bring you back to reality. But the guys aren't totally out of tracks. "Tangerine Sky" could have been an outtake from Prince's AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY (maybe that should be "daze").

The problem that permeates ROLLIN' STONED, and what keeps a good CD from becoming a great one, isn't so much the subject matter --- which, for the most part, is of the boy do I love smoking dope and getting high --- is the fact that the subject matter is so self-limiting. There just aren't that many variations possible on that theme, and by the time you have run through ROLLIN' STONED's 22 tracks the Kings have well-nigh exhausted them all. It might be time for a change in subject matter, if not an inpatient 12-step program. I doubt we'll see either one happening anytime soon.