This California trio boasts solid alt-rap credentials – Marty James and MDA were a Grand Royal act when they went by Scapegoat Wax, and the first One Block Radius sides were dropped courtesy of Oakland’s Hieroglyphics – but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from listening to their self-titled sophomore release; though One Block Radius boasts flashes of unexpected humor and solidly lyrical flow, wide chunks of the record are wasted on tracks devoted to the same old shit. Tracks such as “Dead Man” and “Stand Up” rely, for the most part, on the standard-issue gangsta clichés that were dried up in the mid ‘90s, and nothing here reflects the originality that made 2005’s Long Story Short such an enjoyable listen. It isn’t a total loss, though; while too much of the album is too self-consciously mainstream to make much of an impact, they do occasionally manage to focus their strengths. Songs such as “Shoplifta,” “Screwin’ It Up,” and the wonderfully juvenile “Choc-O-Lot” (sample lyric: “Underneath that sundress / She got cheeks, oh yes”) offer a few moments of smartly crafted hip-hop in between the all the formula. Begging to be cherrypicked, One Block Radius is an iTunes album if ever there was one. (Mercury 2008)
