The Streetsweeper, Vol. 1

As the rap world began to heat up during the early 2000s with one battle after another — Jay-Z versus Nas, 50 Cent versus Ja Rule, and so forth — Columbia Records felt it was timely to sign DJ Kayslay, the loudmouthed underground mixtape DJ known for instigating much of the rhetorical warfare. Over the years, Kayslay had disseminated innumerable bootleg mixes through the streets of New York (and, in turn, over the Internet), most of them featuring popular rappers freestyling over popular beats. Kayslay's major-label debut, The Streetsweeper, Vol. 1, is intended to replicate one of those mixes; in fact, it's even named after one of the so-called Drama King's better-known ones. It's not that simple, though. Columbia can't simply re-release the original Streetsweeper mix, for instance. Anything goes in the underground, but in the mass market, everything needs to be legal, which means performers and beats must be properly licensed (there's 60-plus of the former, 20 of the latter here). Well, everything here is indeed properly licensed, which results in a wonderful lineup: Scarface, Raekwon, the Lox, 50 Cent, Mobb Deep, Nas, Foxy Brown, Cam'ron, Eminem, Noreaga, Busta Rhymes, Joe Budden, Eightball, and so on. In general, the beats here are OK — a few of them notably produced by EZ Elpee, the rest by a bunch of up-and-comers that sound like Just Blaze — and the raps are refreshingly spontaneous at times. Kayslay's more representative, edgier underground mixes are preferable, yet the major-label edition of Streetsweeper is nonetheless a suitable showcase of the gully DJ's style and certainly much easier to obtain as well as much better sounding.