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His street name is Mr. Criminal. That will tip you off right away that his two disc release RYDER MUZIC is not a compilation of classical compositions performed on the harpsichord. I have no idea what his government name is, though I suppose that information is readily available from the fine, upstanding folks at Hi-Power Music. Regardless, Mr. Criminal is a Chicano rapper and producer from the Silver Lake, California area (which apparently has undergone a bit of a demographic shift since Jackson Browne sang about it in 1972). Like everyone else on Hi-Power, Mr. Criminal apparently has a unlimited amount of time and cheddar, given that he releases and/or produces a CD every other month. And, like everyone else on Hi-Power, he drops some really, really good joints along with the f-bombs with which he so liberally sprinkles his lyrics.

Yep, this is RYDER MUZIC, as in low ryder. It’s right out of the Hi-Power/PMC playbook, meaning great beats, minimalist but spot on arrangements and flourishes, and deep bass. That might be on account of the fact that Mr. Criminal does a great deal of the production for Hi-Power artists, among others, so he knows his way around the studio. Additionally --- and I have mentioned this before about another Hi-Power artist --- RYDER MUZIC is great to have in the CD player, cranked all the way up, when you’re in the drive-thru line at Sonic or you’re in the drive-up ATM lane and some hootchie ahead of you is holding things up because she can’t deal with pressing the “withdrawal” button and talking to her babysittin’ momma at the same time. Folks tend to get nervous when you pull up behind them with your windows rattling and some angry sounding- lyrics coming through loud and clear. It makes them stand on whatever they’re doing and get out of the way. I am not above using discs like RYDER MUZIC for that purpose, and it works for me! I am about as philosophically, geographically, chronologically, and ethnically distant from Mr. Criminal’s target audience as it is possible to be, true. When he’s talking about shootouts with the police on “Young, Brown, and Dangerous”…well, that shit is just wrong. It’s part of what is inherently wrong with the genre. But. But. If you want to support the genre, these are the tracks to do it with. And to get those doggies in your way moving out of it.

To the disc itself: RYDER MUZIC is 32 tracks with nary a bad one in the mix. As one might expect from a project of this nature, there are a bunch of guests, from Mr. Capone-E to Nate Dogg to Frank V and others. As one might also anticipate, there aren’t any covers of “Close To You” on RYDER MUZIC. Nope, there are tracks about drugs (“I Inhale,” “High Down the Blvd.”), thuggin’ (“My Style As A Criminal,” “Gangster Love,” “And My Heat Goes”), and, uh, summertime (“Ain’t Nuthing Better Than Summer,” “Sounds of Summertime Remix”). While rap as a genre may supposedly be on its way out, RYDER MUZIC somehow sounds fresh and interesting, not only the first time through but the third and fourth time as well.

The word on the street --- though I haven’t been able to verify this --- is that Mr. Criminal ran into a little trouble on a recent trip to Arizona and apparently will be an involuntary guest there for the immediate future. For now, however, there is plenty of music to keep oneself occupied, and to keep those lines moving. Recommended.