Rush Hour was the surprise hit of the fall movie season, thanks in no small part to Chris Tucker's hyperactive antics and absurdist sense of humor. Its accompanying soundtrack, however, failed to replicate the success of its parent for one simple reason -- where the film found new ways to spin the same action movie clichés, the soundtrack simply recites the standard clichés, finding nothing new within the hip-hop/urban contemporary soundtrack. That doesn't mean it's a bad album, necessarily -- it just has no punch. Most of the usual suspects, from
Dru Hill to some variation of
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, show up and do their thing. Some of this is quite good -- Case, Jay-Z,
Snoop Dogg &
Slick Rick, Imajin and The Wu-Tang Clan are all very entertaining -- but on balance, there are as many misses as hits on the album. Listeners who are serious fans of more than one of the featured artists may want to check it out, but
Rush Hour turns out to be little more than an average soundtrack. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine