Review Summary: IT'S A TRAP!
Some things are just too good to be true. Don’t get me wrong, Ludacris is a pretty cool rapper: he’s nifty with his punchlines, he has a pretty good flow, and a distinguishable, signature voice. But, he still has his flaws. On top of the fact that he can’t make a thoroughly good album, he has a bad ear for beats, and his subject content is quite shallow. So, it was very foolish of me to think that this was going to be his masterpiece when four songs in,
Battle of the Sexes was rather flawless. Amplifying all the aforementioned stereotypes, and downplaying his positive qualities, Ludacris just floundered around on this one.
Once past the four best songs on the album – which are oddly the first four tracks – Ludacris exhibits a bad beat selection, a principally laughable choice of guest artists, and an assortment of narrow-minded topics. From tracks 5-15, absent are the creative punchlines like “Always bring the racket like Venus and Serena” and “Guns get drawn like cartoons” and nowhere to be found are the trunk-rattling, head-bobbing beats. Anything similar in quality to the sharp, shapeshifting synths, thumping bass, and rapid claps of the infectious “How Low” and the catchy chorus of “My Chick Bad” shouldn’t really be expected.
Thusly, from track number five to the album’s end, the instrumentals vary from simple and repetitive (the three step xylophone ascension of “Sex Room”) to bad club cuts (the all-over-the-place synths on “Party No Mo’”) to gushingly typical R&B tracks (the gentle strings, oozy synths, and cutesy percussion of “Tell Me a Secret”) and frankly, they’re all reasonably poor.
Given, Luda wasn’t speaking on anything genuine or refreshing on songs one through four, as he widely resolves to rapping about his sexual endeavors and his supposedly gigantic penile length, only occasionally venturing into tangents on high sums of money in his bank account and his frequent rate of drug and alcohol consumption from time to time, but the difference is tracks one, two, three, and four are executed better than cuts five through fifteen.
Battle of the Sexes is, in essence, a tale of two Ludas. On one end of the scale is a great punchline artist whom displays some charismatic rapping and is backed by some grooving beats, and on the other end of the scale is a rapper whose potential is not capitalized upon, and sadly, the latter end of the scale outweighs the other.
