The gimmick here is that on each track a hard rock act has been combined with a rap act:
Sonic Youth and
Cypress Hill,
Living Colour and
Run-D.M.C., and so on. The idea, as with
Run-D.M.C.'s duet with
Aerosmith on "Walk This Way," is to achieve musical synergy and commercial crossover, and at least the second goal was met when this album went gold while the movie it accompanied went into the dumper. But, as on any duet album, from
Sinatra to
Elton John, the concept has to be translated into appropriate pairings on good songs to really work. Sometimes, it has.
Living Colour and
Run-D.M.C. meld well on "Me, Myself & My Microphone," and
Slayer and
Ice-T make an angry thrash of "Disorder." But in both cases, the rappers are familiar with the style --
Ice-T has a metal band of his own in
Body Count. Elsewhere, neither the rappers nor the metal kids sound distinctive enough to make a striking impression beyond a faithfulness to a hard, angry approach. ~ William Ruhlmann