Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition

Once upon a time, Young Jeezy was invincible, a superhero. He grew famous peddling an overblown, over-simplified cartoon of machismo and violence, pumped full of dubious sociopolitical implications and adrenaline. His first three albums were some of the last decade's finest action flicks. The widescreen production, from Shawty Redd, DJ Toomp, and others, furnished the exploding tanks while Jeezy supplied the boiled-down, bumper-sticker dialogue: "I remember nights/ I didn't remember nights." "Who, me?/ I emerge from the crack smoke." He was Stallone in Cobra; he was Schwarzenegger in Commando.

But every decade has its own action heroes. Nowadays, Jeezy is just another down-on-his luck gangsta rapper being jerked around by his record company. Rick Ross is the overfed rap kingpin of the moment; the simmering feud between them has nothing to do with street credentials and everything to do with the fact that in a rap moment mired in varsity-lettered, middle-class nice guys, there's room for only one Rambo. Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition, which has finally wheezed its way across the finish line, is a telling moment: It's a solid effort, but it's also the first time that supply for the Snowman's product has begun to outstrip demand.

Nothing much is visibly wrong with Thug Motivation 103. In fact, a lot of it is pretty great: "Trapped" opens with a verse from boho neo-soul queen Jill Scott that induces misplaced nostalgia shivers for classic Lauryn Hill. Jeezy sells the hoary details of the song's poverty lament-- no cable in the house, old milk in the empty fridge-- with gut-twisting force. On "Way Too Gone", rising Atlanta producer Mike WiLL Made It (Meek Millz's "Tupac Back", Gucci Mane's "East Atlanta 6") provides a head-spinning cross-breed of trap-rap and cloud rap. The Fabolous and Jadakiss-assisted "OJ" provides the extravagant ignorance. All of it is satisfyingly huge- and evil-sounding.

And yet Thug Motivation somehow feels both airless and over-inflated, the sound of an artist trying to revisit something gone. In the long gap between this record and 2008's The Recession, Jeezy has done almost nothing to tweak his formula-- a brief guest appearance by of-the-moment ATL star Future aside, there's not much here to suggest Jeezy has been keeping tabs on Southern rap's furiously molting trends, which means even the exciting moments have a certain "I am big; it's the pictures that got small" feel.

You can hear the lack of organic excitement most clearly on the album's curiously flat Huge High-Profile Hard-Sell collaboration: "I Do", featuring Jay-Z and André 3000. Jay-Z hasn't appeared on a Jeezy record since the remix to "Go Crazy", and André 3000 guest verses pop up about as frequently as the Northern Lights; the result, however, is shockingly unexciting for the pooled talents involved. For one, the song openly mimics the formula of "International Player's Anthem"-- ecstatic soul loop, rapturous André verse about marital love-- and baldly copying one of the best rap songs of the last decade is just a bad idea. When it leaked, it was greeted mostly with shrugs and yawns and disappeared into the same, sealed-off rap-buzz purgatory that has settled around other former gangsta-rap heavyweights like 50 Cent. Despite all indicators, and without a chart or street single, Thug Motivation 103 sold respectably, and probably beat his label's projections: 233,000, just behind Michael Buble's Christmas album and Adele. The Snowman will live to wheeze another day. But his aura of invincibility has been punctured.