'Legacy' is typical 'Left-Eye'
HIP-HOP
"Eye Legacy"
Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes.
Mass Appeal Entertainment. 14 tracks.
Grade: C+
If this CD came out today — and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes were still alive — it would probably be considered extraordinary if for no other reason than there isn't a single female rapper on Billboard's current rap singles chart.
Instead, "Eye Legacy" comes out almost seven years after the Atlanta hip-hop superstar died in a car accident in Honduras. And it is really just ordinary Left Eye. (Yes, the 30-year-old's four-CD career with Atlanta trio TLC was anything but ordinary).
Here, as on her TLC records and guest appearance on others, Lopes is fun ("Crank It"); inspirational ("Spread Your Wings"); a gifted storyteller ("Let It Out"); and at times a rapper a little too focused on delivery and line rhyming that she comes across forced ("Listen").
The occasional problem with posthumous hip-hop albums — think late rappers Tupac Shakur and Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace — is that they almost inherently crackle with the energy and language and melodies of the moment. Put that same material out years after it was recorded, it sounds dated.
Luckily "Eye Legacy" doesn't have that issue. While only a few of these singles might actually feel 2009 ("Block Party," "Let's Just Do It"), Lopes' specialty was rapping about emotions, hopes and fears. Topics that can't be confined to a particular time period. That's quite a legacy, indeed.
