Rapper Gone Bad

Mac Dre was a pimp with old school credentials, a gangster with Technicolor daydreams. Even as it refines his taste for carnival-like atmospheres, Rapper Gone Bad might be Dre’s most straightforward statement. Working in collaboration with three of the Bay Area’s best gangsta rap producers — Will “Flexxx” Hankins, Lev Berlak and Phil Armstrong — and backed by a cast of West Coast underground heroes, Dre aims “Fast Money,” “Fortytwo Fake” and “I’m a Thug” at the millions of people who bought 2Pac’s All Eyez On Me. If he couldn’t win them over, he could at least show them the far-reaching parameters of gangsta funk. Like a great chef, Dre had localized taste, and he tapped directly into the off-kilter sensibilities of the Bay Area with tracks like “Fish Head Stew,” which features a brilliantly left-field chorus: “I'm just a pimp, mane, trying to stack some Funyuns / So I can have French maids pedicure my bunions.” Dre could never have been a crossover star on par with Pac — he was too idiosyncratic — but “Mac Stabber” shows that his soul too harbored an impassioned rage.