![\"Young](\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/young_money.jpg\")
<\/a>For a genre that\u2019s often focused on the individual, hip-hop really loves a crew. The associations are a short hand co-sign or a way to brand a movement. Since the heyday of Bad Boy, Death Row, No Limit, and the like, the record label roster has doubled as crew. With large groups like Wu-Tang being an anomaly, it\u2019s a quick way to have strength in numbers.<\/p>\nHome of, among others, Turk, BG, Juvenile, and of course, Lil Wayne, New Orleans\u2019 Cash Money Records was nearly unstoppable in the late \u201890s and early 2000s. But as the star of Lil Wayne began to rise and the shine of the Cash Money began to fade, they very wisely formed a spin off label headed by Wayne called Young Money in 2005.<\/p>\n
While Wayne has stepped down as the day-to-day president, he\u2019s still very much the leader and spiritual captain, and under his guidance, the label signed two of its biggest names, Nicki Minaj and Drake. So while the label doesn\u2019t have the same cultural heft as the original run of Cash Money, the name carries a fair amount of cache. Its first proper label compilation, We Are Young Money<\/i>, was released in 2009, going gold largely off the strength of the Lil Wayne\u2013 and Drake-led \u201cEvery Girl\u201d and the similarly captained \u201cBedRock.\u201d But those two songs also featured Jae Millz, Gudda Gudda, Nicki Minaj, Tyga, and Lloyd, and gave the then B-team a higher profile while emphasizing the idea of a big recording family. It only makes sense that they\u2019d revive the approach, hence the hilariously but likely unintentionally timely, Young Money: Rise of an Empire.<\/i><\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve listened to any modern blazin\u2019 hip-hop and R&B station in the last six years, you largely know what to expect from Rise of an Empire<\/i>: 808 drum kits, trapped-out beats, and enough synthesized bleeps and bloops to make Rosie the Robot swoon. To say you heard it a thousand times before may be underselling it, so it\u2019s best to focus of the individual performances.<\/p>\n
Unlike Cash Money in its heyday, Young Money doesn\u2019t have a unified sonic identity, so things are more loosely unified by theme and attitude. Drake and Lil Wayne make distinctive appearances across the compilation, although Drake is only featured on one song, \u201cTrophies.\u201d The other highlight is the too short \u201cHittin\u2019 Like.\u201d Although there\u2019s a small cameo from Channel West Coast, the focus on singing over rapping is a palate cleanser. One of the outright disappointments is Minaj\u2019s \u201cLooking Ass.\u201d Minaj is at her best when she taps into her next-generation Busta Rhymes flow or when she\u2019s in \u201crappity-rap\u201d mode. Here, it\u2019s just a leaden rebuke to dudes who don\u2019t live up to her standards, not the return to form she probably needs after her failed American Idol<\/i> campaign. Young Money: Rise Of An Empire<\/i> isn\u2019t really a victory lap, but it\u2019s also not a total flop. If nothing else, it achieves its goal of putting a flashlight on the Young Money bench. Still, it\u2019s a bummer the rumored Paris Hilton track didn\u2019t make the cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a genre that\u2019s often focused on the individual, hip-hop really loves a crew. The associations are a short hand co-sign or a way to brand a movement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[34,450,449,451,448],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","tag-album-review","tag-drake","tag-lil-wayne","tag-nicki-minaj","tag-young-money"],"yoast_head":"\n
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