Steve 'Flash' JuonIf I’m consistent about anything it’s that admire the hustle of rappers who became major players in the world of entertainment. I don’t always agree with their music but I understand the work ethic it takes to get noticed and STAY noticed once you reach the spotlight. That’s something the late great Tupac Shakur understood well. In his lifetime he was constantly reinventing himself, working his way up from being a side act with Digital Underground to a rap star in his own right. As his fame and his legal troubles rose up along with him, he pivoted to becoming both the face of the West coast vs. East coast rivalry and making waves in Hollywood as an actor. Had he survived who knows what his third act would have been? Rapper/actor/mogul? He might have become a tech giant, or a lauded author, or the owner of his own Death Row style label (without the baggage). We’ll never know.
We’ll also never know his sincere Percy Miller’s ode to Tupac was on “West Coast Bad Boyz II.” Keep in mind that Master P is one of those hustlers I praise. I don’t like every album that he made or every single that he released, but I appreciate how he went from slanging other people’s albums at a record store to becoming a local and a national rap star — then turned that success into an even larger success with No Limit Records. Their time on top may have been short (going bankrupt in 2003) but the legacy they left behind looms large, and it didn’t stop P from continuing to evolve. New label, new albums, BET documentaries, movies, he even owns a well regarded pro wrestling league. For me “R.I.P. Tupac” came too soon after Shakur’s passing, and sampling the instrumental to “Ambitionz Az a Ridah” made it even more tacky, but I still respect Mr. Miller regardless.
The reason it bothered me and still does is that it all feels tacked on to “West Coast Bad Boyz II,” an album that was clearly already in the works when he died and that wasn’t ever going to feature him in any way. Can you picture Death Row letting him do anything outside their fold while he was alive? Even his first posthumous album was on the Row. That doesn’t mean P wasn’t serious about throwing up the W. He had spent half of the 90’s in California before moving back to New Orleans and still had a lot of love for the West, and as evidenced by Westside Connection appearing on “Bangin'” they still had a lot of love for him too. Incidentally I know there are apocryphal tales of P “opening for 2Pac in concert” in Cali, but I’ve never seen footage of it. Feel free to send it to me if it exists, I’d love to see it.
Trying to find one consistent playlist for this album is frankly a mess. Given how many artists Miller pulled in from outside the No Limit fold for the compilation, many of the songs have reverted back to the bigger name rappers who contributed — such as C-Bo’s “Survival 1st” featuring Lunasicc and Marvaless. Shakur may be the rapper who gets name checked on the cover, but we could just as easily pour one out for the majority of RBL Posse on “Call It What You Want,” or for 11/5’s Maine-O who passed away in 2021. Reminisce with me as we listen to “Tryin 2 Make Ends.”
Much as I want to get into the groove of this release, the dearth of crossover between Cali artists and New Orleans artists makes it feel like two separate compilations spliced together. The Cali artists are collaborating with each other, as you hear AllfrumthaI and Tha Comrads together on “Got the Best Hand,” but who raps with TRU on “Bad Boyz On a Mission?” Nobody. It’s just TRU. We’ve got another chance to reminisce on the soldiers who have been lost in the rap game though with Mac Dre’s “What Cha Like.” It’s a bit depressing how many people from this CD aren’t around any more.
At least MC Eiht is still here and still dropping new albums in the 2020’s. I’m thankful for that.
Wouldn’t this album have made more sense if he had done a song with somebody instead of solo though? He’s definitely a “West Coast Bad Boy” and a Compton legend, but he could have done a song with one of the Miller brothers or at least collaborated with someone like Rappin’ 4-Tay. You can’t escape feeling that there’s no coherence behind this compilation, no central theme of any kind. Maybe it wasn’t in the works before Shakur passed away. Maybe Percy Miller rushed out a project just to get his “R.I.P. Tupac” song out. I hate to think that but the evidence does trend in that direction. We didn’t need interludes on this album either — that just watered down a weak presentation further.
Much as I respect P, I don’t really find much redeeming about “West Coast Bad Boyz II.” The artists on here I like had much better songs on their own albums, and the few good songs that weren’t ultimately were when they simply said “nah this belongs to me” and took it back. C-Bo, Mac Dre, et cetera. It’s a fragmented and disjointed No Limit album that both shows how far Master P’s status as a label owner had risen and how little he was able to consolidate that power into a tribute to the West that made sense. Perhaps it could have worked if he wasn’t simply alternating between his own acts and songs he bought to fill out the album every few tracks. There are movie soundtracks from No Limit that better showcase both his roster and outsider acts than this.