Pandemonium!

12/11/2002 7:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy

Next time you hear someone reminisce fondly about the Beatles putting out two albums a year, and wondering why almost no one does it now, direct them here. Released just months after B2K's debut, and almost simultaneously with a Christmas collection, the most exciting thing about this disc is the exclamation point in its title.

"We businessmen now," the teen R&B sensations insist on "Boys For Life," and the proof is all over these tired-sounding tracks, hustled out before a half-dozen new soundalike groups can hijack their female fans. It's an impossible task for Omarion, Raz-B, Lil' Fiz, and J-Boog, who are also keen to show they've grown up plenty since, uh, last March. The P. Diddy-produced "Bump Bump Bump" and Neptunes knockoffs like "My Girl" make a passable case for the quartet as big boys, but the slower stuff shows they're still rugrats next to older peers like Dru Hill and 3rd Storee. And the frequent boasts of "This is gangsta!" aren't convincing enough to fool the 10-year-olds who'll snap this up by the truckload.