Chingy - Hoodstar

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Chingy’s three album deep discography has been a rollercoaster ride to say the least. It seems for this album however, we are headed for a big dip in the ride. His first album Jackpot sounded so new and unmarked when it first surfaced. Powerballin’ stayed solid for most of the album offering a few surprises every now and again but Hoodstar is cursed with sounding old as soon as you put it in your player.

Of the 13 tracks on this album, they are split into ‘Hood Side’ and ‘Star Side’ seemingly to try and tell the listener which tracks are intended for the hood and which tracks are intended for teeny boppers. To me this is way whack and corny, but I don’t mind it too much, Chingy can do what he wants, as long as he gets the music sounding right. Apparently, he can’t even do THAT for us.

Out of the six tracks on the ‘Hood Side’ only one is relatively ear catching – Nike Aurr’s and Crispy Tee’s has great production put into it. Chingy even tries to change his style once in a while throughout the track. The rest of the cuts in this section sound like a poor soul who’s had his chain taken off him while in the ‘Hood’ (monotonous and sad).

From the ‘Star Side’, we see the album’s first single – Pullin’ Me Back. With everything else put into consideration …I doubt it was hard for the respective powers that be to choose the single for Hoodstar. The singing by Tyrese on this track is very impressive, and Chingy’s accent even presents a great entertaining contrast.

Overall, Chingy does not rap well enough, broad enough, or surprise us enough for this to be considered one of his ‘better’ albums. Hoodstar can only be broken down into these topics – Cars, threads and ass. It seems our boy hit the ‘Jackpot’ on his first album, and is gonna live off that for a while to come.