Chamillionaire: Ultimate Victory

The South has carved a niche in the mainstream that's hard to break. Besides a North Carolina brotherly duo that got more fame for a spat with BET than their music, and the politician-in-rapper's-clothing David Banner, the list of Southern representatives in the hip-hop nation that choose to carry substance instead of a machine gun is short. Could Chamillionaire, the coy Houston-bred MC (that's right, MC, not rapper or emcee) whose "Ridin' Dirty" caught on with the gangstas, the clubs and the forward-thinkers alike, be the "messiah" from the South?

Perhaps. If Cham's first solo album, The Sound of Revenge, was a war cry, Ultimate Victory finds him in the middle of battle with a few pit stops (to get p*ssy, collect payments; ya know?) On "The Morning News," Cham takes the anchor seat and everything appears fine, no different from your local CBS affiliate. But when the J.R. Rotem-produced banger "Hip-Hop Police" comes on, it's like someone hi-jacked the teleprompter -- things go bananas. When Cham finishes an O'Reilly-style scolding of the boys-in-blue, The Ruler himself drops a slick verse to take it up a notch. With the pigs having been dealt with, Cham takes a stab at the "Industry Groupie" over another bangin' Rotem soundscape. Unfortunately, that beat is the only aspect of the song that saves it from being a bad imitation of The Game's "Wouldn't Get Far," name-dropping and all.

There are only a few miscues like this on the album, luckily. After a breezy "Ultimate Vacation," courtesy of the Beat Bullies, and a head-scratcher about whether money brings happiness ("I Think I Love You"), Cham returns to his hard-hitting journalistic form on "The Evening News" and the solid "Rocky Road" featuring Devin The Dude. The finale, "Ultimate Victory," is indeed just that. Over the Happy Perez-supplied melancholy instrumentation, Chamillionaire spits out his trials and tribulations with the rhyme structure of a Harlem resident; the flow of a Long Beach gangsta, and most importantly, his own voice.

There may be rappers adding the "conscious" and the "substance" descriptors to their bios that will change the Southern stereotype. For now, though, Chamillionaire remains the only MC from the South that can't be pegged, categorized or pigeonholed -- or what have you -- according to what the mainstream considers the "sound" of the South.

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