Review Summary: She told me to calm down, I said Handle The Vibe.
What can I say about The Art Of War that hasn't already been said by the RIAA confirming its quadruple Platinum status in early 1998...well I can tell you all how this happened and more! Since Johnny Bravo, Bill Cosby and Question Marks on MX have been banned, apparently, I will try and tone this review down just a tad. There will be no rhetorical leads. No sarcasm. Just str8 fire. So apparently, this album was originally titled as DNA Level C, which is Cleveland backwards. I like it. I'm not from Cleveland and never been there, but that album title would have still to this day been makin peeps think 'bout ***. This was going down for a reason. Copycats of the band. Three 6 Mafia and Twista to name a few. Bizzy got depressed and stopped going to shows. Bizzy was consistent, he felt something of a competition deriving from his style. Bizzy was also dealing with a death of his Father during this album, and he was emotionally destroyed. He still delivered.
This album is far under the radar in the hip hop community. It is a double disc and almost every song is a gem. The lyrics suggest some sort of revenge, I would assume from Bizzy solely, but that being said there are some slow jams on this album. This album will make you understand loss, love, live, anything in general and then take you back to it, like they were some sort of disciples at the time trying to paint a picture, tell a story without going into details. I mean, some of the lyrics are suggestive, violent, speak of sadness of the soul. But the real message is the art of war. How does Bizzy tell millions of people Twista, Crucial Conflict, Three 6 Mafia that they are clones? I understand where he's coming from, but I look at it like they were inspired by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. You can't deny, they started a genre and a plethora of artists wanted to be like BTH. Period.
Anyways, unlike this albums' length, this review is short and simple. It's a great example of Bizzy, Layzie, Krayzie, U-Neek, and the production is solid for its length.
