All of
Keith Murray's strengths -- his distinctive delivery, unique rhymes, and best of all, his incredibly smooth flow -- tended to suffer from excessive repetition on his individual solo albums. Each of his three LPs to date have paired a couple of incredible tracks with many more that try the same things and often fail simply because they'd already been tried. Given that, a best-of collection hitting on all of
Murray's strongest tracks is a natural fit. Also important is the teaming of
Murray with producer
Erick Sermon (on 11 of the 14 tracks here). It has to rank as one of the best combos in hip-hop's history, and the duo has combined for tight, innovative tracks time and time again on
Murray's albums. And thanks to fraternal licensing agreements,
The Most Beautifullest Hits also includes
Murray's best appearances on other rapper's records, back to his breakout on 1993's "Hostile" from No Pressure by
Erick Sermon to the remix of
LL Cool J's "I Shot Ya" (also featuring Foxy Brown,
Fat Joe, and Prodigy) to his appearance on the soundtrack to 1997's Dangerous Ground. Taken in sum, the album is well-compiled and skips over
Murray's weaker joints to embrace all of his best. ~ John Bush