Z-Ro's hook is that the intimacy in his raps- perpetually commemorating a handful of dead collaborators and friends, worshiping solitude and seemingly dismissing all worldly pleasures except, of course, kush, candy paint, and lean - dips into weakness.īut for all his confession Z-Ro brushes his breakthroughs aside. The samples are all tamped down and strip-mined in their reincarnations on Crack. Z-Ro produces eight of the album's 15 tracks, and leans on heaps of previous compositions. It can't make its terrain of solipsistic gangsters and Houston beltway-sulk hum with emotion or its layers of horns and hi-hats shake with any color. Case in point is Z-Ro's sixth on Rap-A-Lot, Crackwhich is drab, shabby and more than a little lonely 'I smoke purple stuff alone in my room'. For Z-Ro, who first appeared in the corners of DJ Screw's chain of drizzling, endless mids classics most of which are now conveniently repackaged and available at your nearest Best Buy- start with the 3xCD June 27and has released five albums already on Rap-A-Lot, the whole world is starting to sound like it's closing up shop. Foreclosure is nipping at hip-hop's heels.