Bone Thugs Fires a Fierce Double Volley in ‘War’

“Double your pleasure, double your fun” is a concept that might work well for chewing gum, but it has met with mixed results in hip-hop. Highways could be paved with the great rap singles that come out each year, but there probably aren’t more than 30 cohesive, seamless albums in the history of rap. The odds of finding a two-disc rap collection that holds together are really long.

So this double album is a welcome surprise. The Cleveland quartet has it all in this 28-track work, from menacing presence to beautiful yet haunting sing-song melodies to rapid-fire, cutting-edge rhymes that shatter syntax at supersonic speed. What separates Bone Thugs from most of the competition is the way that the songs maintain their hard-core edge while being framed by DJ U-Neek’s sleek, melodic sound.

By working with both Tupac Shakur (a guest here) and the Notorious B.I.G. (on a song from from B.I.G.’s “Life After Death” album), Bone Thugs-N-Harmony helps draw a close to rap’s stupid bicoastal war. They join the rapid-fire wordplay of the East Coast with the bass-heavy, deeply melodic funk sound of the West. Combining the forces, the Bones emerge as victorious rap generals.

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* Excerpts from these albums and other recent releases are available on The Times’ World Wide Web site. Point your browser to: https://www.latimes.com/soundclips