It’s got hooks and lines, but it’s still a stinker.

Listening to this record you sometimes wonder why certain hip-hop acts don’t just cut out the middle man and hack 20 smackers out of your online credit card rather than going through the tiresome business of making a CD.

Okay, Irv Gotti Presents… isn’t that bad, but there’s barely an idea on here that hasn’t been used before, better. Even the sleeve is a tired old play on the black mafia angle, sort of Puff Daddy & The Revolution via the Godfadda. As for the content:

“I love this gangsta shit niggaaaaa…. don’t give a fuck…. bitches” – it’s like being stuck in a room with a ten-year-old who has just plucked up the courage to swear for the first time. The beats are lethargic, the melodies are second generation g-funk and the main players – Irv Gotti, Chink Santana, Cadillac Tah and more – just sound slovenly, and not in a Snoop-y gin and juice way either.

I have no problem with hip-hop’s obsession with takin’ care of business when it’s someone like Wu-Tang or Cypress Hill or Jay Z, who – when on form – at least back up the franchise with quality control on the production line, constructing complex lyrical systems, employing musical nous and imagination. But what Murder Inc CEO Gotti gives us here is the rap version of prime time American TV where they cut to the commercials right after the credits. It’s like leafing through a particularly bad issue of Rolling Stone and searching in vain for the features amidst the ads. It’s like a bad writer telling you the story rather than showing it.

Okay, I admit it, I’m listening to my own prejudices here as much as what’s coming through the speakers. And there are a couple of redeeming moments – the spunky cornergirl shimmy of ‘No One Does It Better’ or the novelty value of Ja-Rule and J-Lo on the single ‘Ain’t It Funny’.

But if Irv Gotti Presents The Inc isn’t exactly the bottom of the barrel, it’s not many layers above it either.