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any critic reviews on L&F?


*mimi*

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Planet Sound gave it a 6/10.

They said it was a fine album but disappointing that he has to start beef over rappers. :speechless:

what idiots.. he hasnt started any beef.. all he did "was admit that being dissed by eminem hurt him" how many rappers admit it hurts when some1 disses em..they mostly say it didnt mean ****..i mean thats how honest will is being on this record..90% of rappers arent honest on their records..eff a review!!! :scope: :hmmad:

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i havent seen any..the only 1 i care about is www.allmusic.com they always write great reviews.. im sure vibe n source and every1 will find a way to trash the album

:werd: all music always supports will. they always give him good reviews for the most part.

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i havent seen any..the only 1 i care about is www.allmusic.com they always write great reviews.. im sure vibe n source and every1 will find a way to trash the album

:werd: all music always supports will. they always give him good reviews for the most part.

Yup, and good reviews is exactly what he deserves.

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Planet Sound gave it a 6/10.

They said it was a fine album but disappointing that he has to start beef over rappers.  :speechless:

what idiots.. he hasnt started any beef.. all he did "was admit that being dissed by eminem hurt him" how many rappers admit it hurts when some1 disses em..they mostly say it didnt mean ****..i mean thats how honest will is being on this record..90% of rappers arent honest on their records..eff a review!!! :scope: :hmmad:

Totally agree u man! They don't have a clue what they're sayin', they just talk shi*!!!!!!!!!! Just don't give a damn... :nono:

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I'm searching the web... I'll see if I can find something more...

Mr. Smith, Good Intentions Will Get You Nowhere...

Mar 22 '05

Author's Product Rating

Pros

Will stays true to the style he's been rocking since Day One.

Cons

Wooden, corny rhymes and bland, uninspired production.

The Bottom Line

Mr. Box Office Draw admirably returns to the hip-hop game. Unfortunately, he forgot to being much interesting music with him. Skip this album.

Full Review

You gotta hand it to Will Smith for staying true to himself.

During a record-making career that began almost twenty years ago, the Philly native has never succumbed to thugging it out, maintaining a Huxtable-esque attitude in his music that has made it palatable to a greater range of people than most hip-hop. In an age when even Eminem tries to pass himself as a gangsta rapper, it probably wouldn't cause too much of a fuss if the former Fresh Prince busted a few gats in his rhymes. Actually, it's to his credit (and a testament to his love of hip-hop) that Will even still makes rap records, considering his significantly more lucrative career as a movie star.

But here he is, over a decade since he's become a full-fledged film star, and he's still plugging away at hip-hop records. "Lost & Found" is his ninth studio album (counting the Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince joints), and it represents a slight step toward maturity in lyrical content. He's still "gettin' jiggy wit it" on the party jams, but he's backed away from the overt comedy of his older records to cover topics such as obsessive fanhood and religion. It makes for an album that's sort of an interesting listen at first. However, Smith's flow, which was cool in 1986, is occasionally wooden and unwieldy, and his penchant for corniness pops up way too much for "Lost & Found" to be consistently enjoyable.

In addition, I gotta say that the production here is decidedly average. Will Smith is a mega-multi-dookie millionaire, you'd think that he'd be able to afford top-notch production (then again, you'd also think he'd be able to hire Nas again as a ghostwriter). Most of the album is handled by unknowns. Longtime cohort Jazzy Jeff pops up on the album's opening track, "Here He Comes", and Jeff does suitable damage to his rep as one of the best hip-hop DJs of all time by co-opting the "Spider-Man" theme for this song. Kwame, who produced Lloyd Banks' hit "On Fire", takes a crack at the first single, "Switch", and does a good job with a beat that's pretty much all bass and handclaps. It'll get butts on the dance floor, but on this track, smith's rhyming is secondary.

Even when Smith comes with stronger lyrical content, there's something that stops the songs from being hot. "Mr. Niceguy" throws a creampuff of a dart at Eminem (who dissed Smith on "The Real Slim Shady". On the track Will admits that Slim's diss bothered him, but he made another 20 mil and that made everything better. He saves his darts for radio DJ Wendy Williams, who has insinuated that he and his wife Jada are gay and in a sham marriage. On "Niceguy" he threatens to buy Williams' radio station and send her packing, and on "Swagga", he calls her "fat" and "ugly". Harsh words coming from the man who made "Parents Just Don't Understand", I guess. This track also suffers from quite possibly the worst chorus ever put on a pop record. It's like Jim Carrey's character from "The Truman Show" took over a rap record.

Bad choruses put a damper on several other songs. "Ms. Holy Roller" is an interesting track about a friend who became a born-again Christian and is suddenly criticizing Will's lifestyle. This song kinda hits home because my experience with hard-line or born-again Christians has found them to be overly critical and ultimately hypocritical. "Tell Me Why", quite possibly the album's best track, features Will trying to make sense of the world around him. The fact that he shouts the second verse with rage suggests gimmickry, but it sounds sincere. And any song with a soul-stirring performance from Mary J. Blige (handling chorus duty here) deserves your props.

To be fair, "Lost & Found" does feature Will making slight modifications to his rhyme style, but for a dude who takes a slight jab at hip-hop's Great White Hope, he occsionally comes off as trying to sound like a G-rated Eminem. This comparison is most evident on "Loretta", which is basically Em's "Stan", only Will Smith-ized. It's a story about an obsessed fan who follows Will around for years, ultimately getting arrested and sent away after hiding out at the Oscars trying to meet him. Unlike "Stan", a song that literally made my jaw drop the first time I heard it, "Loretta" paints it's central character as sort of a benign "oh, I'm in love with Will, but I'm not CRAZY or anything" character. It's sort of anticlimactic, and unwilling to admit that there is danger in the world. Will just seems to put a pollyanna-type gloss over everything. And, hey, I love positivity as much (if not more) than the next guy-but part of being real is admitting that the world isn't all peaches and cream, knowhumsayin'?

It ain't like Will doesn't make good points. "I Wish I Made That" makes the excellent point that black radio won't play his records because he's not "hard" enough, then goes on to quote hits by Ludacris, Terror Squad and Snoop Dogg in the chorus. Snoop himself drops it like it's hot on the bass-heavy "Pump Ya Brakes", which is hands down the best beat on the album. Unfortunately, Will drops an elementary flow on the song, and Snoop appears as pretty much window dressing here. However, Will's ultimate no-no appears on "If U Can't Dance", which not only features one of the Pussycat Dolls on vocals, but finds Will adopting a 1984-era "Roxanne Roxanne" flow. It's embarrassing, even for someone without major rhyme skills like Big Willie.

Above all, Will doesn't do much to distance himself from his rep as the hip-hop good guy, and I respect that. He's no Rakim in the rhyming department, and I respect that too. If the dude's still making records after twenty years in the game and an extremely lucrative 2nd career, you gotta respect dude's dedication to hip-hop. You also gotta respect his dedication to positivity in a sea of negativity, and his willingness to stay the course he's stayed his entire career deserves your props.

But while Will sets a good example, he doesn't back it up with great music, and quite frankly, he never has. It's not like you can't have a big vocabulary and a hot flow (see: Rakim, Biggie), and it's not like you can't be a comfortably middle or upper-class citizen and not a good rapper (see: Rakim again, Chuck D., De La Soul), but Will just is not-and has never been-a particularly skilled or interesting rapper. His recent albums have gotten over not only because of Will's charisma (and a serious amount of goodwill carried over from his film career), but also because of recognizable samples and glossy production. When Will decides to take a more organic approach (like on this fairly sample free album), the result is somewhere between kinda boring and REALLY embarrassing. Big Will gets props for being true to himself, but props can only get you so far, and "Lost & Found" is yet the latest example of a Will Smith musical project that proves he should probably stick to acting.

Will Smith "Lost & Found"

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

REWIND: "Tell Me Why" (feat. Mary J. Blige). "Pump Ya Brakes" (feat. Snoop Dogg), "Ms. Holy Roller"

FAST-FORWARD: "Here He Comes", "If U Can't Dance (Slide)", "Mr. Niceguy"

Great Music To Play While: Trying not to laugh as Will states that he can "rap circles around" most of today's hip-hop cliques.

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