The great Robin Williams once said, “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money.” Therefore, people who sell cocaine basically have a licence to print the shit. Clipse and their Re-Up Gang are a prime example. This is how cocaine and gangsta rap should combine; smooth, lyrical and refined. Any man can hustle crack to crack heads. It’s cheap, addictive and easy to make. But cocaine is the gentleman’s drug of choice. Most gangsta rappers flaunt their money in a clichéd manner, boasting about how many gats they’re wielding and how many times they’ve been shot. But not the Re-Up Gang, these guys spend money like it was a sport.

Clipse have been on the scene for a couple years now and are best remembered for their street classic album Hell Hath No Fury. The album was like audio cocaine; rich, powerful and sexy with the Neptunes producing some of their hottest beats to date (check out Mr. Me Too and Wamp Wamp for proof). The Re-Up Gang is Clipse’s clique, and their album may lack the sexy production that put Clipse (and the Neptunes) on the map, but they still have the same class and joie de vivre.

The production may not have the sexy minimal sounds from the Neptunes, but it does feature a beat from Scott Storch who brings some banging sounds to the track Fast Life. The lyrics on the album are pretty smooth (the hooks are borderline annoying) and most of the production is pretty hot, but these guys project such a classy gangsta image that most of their sins can be forgiven.

Re-Up can sound generic at times, with almost every track being about money and how well these hustlers spend it. But, their knowledge of exclusive brand names and designers makes the album surprisingly interesting. Also, Clipse’s flow and word play give the mixtape a refined flavour that’s hard to ignore. If anything, the other boys in the Re-Up Gang just steal perfectly good recording time from the Clipse twins, but I suppose the point of the record was to give the rest of the posse a time to shine. It’s just they don’t shine as bright as Clipse.

This album is like class-a Colombian street snow. It’s worth its weight in yayo, and while I would have rather seen Clipse drop another album, Re-Up’s effort is still a worthy companion to Clipse’s ever growing catalogue. Grab this album and do a couple rails of your finest powder white while banging to this joint.