Link: Official Trina Site
The Inside Pulse:
If Katrina (Trina) Taylor isn’t the worst rapper in the game, then she’s certainly in the front row of the class picture. Her entire career can be explained thusly: she’s has a fat booty. Now, make no mistake”¦it’s a magnificent ass, but The Glamorest Life marks Trina’s third solo attempt to get all of us to care about the inherent beauty of her aforementioned booty. Her previous efforts (Da Baddest B*tch and Diamond Princess) weren’t without the occasional guilty pleasure piece (No Panties, for example), but, by and large, her discography plays like a parody of the “Big Momma” materialistic excesses of a 1996 Lil’ Kim or Foxy Brown. This supposedly sexy, self-indulgent nonsense was played out almost a decade ago, but, in small doses it can work. Trina’s guest spot on Missy Elliott’s One Minute Man remix was raunchy fun, but that was just one verse. Can the concept ever work over an entire album? No”¦no, it can’t.
Positives:
The Glamorest Life is only 47 minutes long, with the longest cut running about 4 minutes and change. Rick Ross shows up to trade hardcore barbs with Trina on I Gotta and the “he said/she said” give-and-take is so explicitly over the top that it becomes a ridiculously listenable car wreck. Jazze Pha saves It’s Your B-Day with a bouncy lil’ beat that’s fun, but forgettable. Still, it’s the best production on the entire album.
Negatives:
Trina has always used this bizarre voice-altering process in the post-production of her albums. The result is a nasally, electroshock flow that sounds like it was helped out by helium. Of the 13 tracks, Trina has writing credits on just seven of them. Although, when she’s calling herself “the ghetto Kelly Osbourne” or telling us she “needs an investor who’ll eat her like Hannibal Lecter”, maybe that’s a good thing. This album is an absolute mess of recycled styles, such as Mannie Fresh trying to recapture the off-key essence of Hood Rich with Da Club. Snoop Dogg sleepwalks through a cameo on Sexy Gurl, Lil’ Wayne is his usual nonsensical self on Don’t Trip and Kelly Rowland appears on the worst cut any of you will hear this year. On Here We Go, under a sample of Tender Love, Kelly and Trina lament a love lost.
Cross-Breed:
Early Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim mixed with the numbing drum machine beats of an uninspired production company.
Reason to Buy:
This one’s for prepubescent boys who still get excited when a woman talks dirty, regardless of whether or not the woman is actually”¦y’know”¦with you at the time. This is swap meet phone sex, kids, and we should all be saving our money for the real thing.
