Pitchfork

The first single from Mike Jones' second album repeats the agonies of his major-label premiere "Still Tippin'." Most of these concern his anxieties about wealth: For one, he reminds us again that, before finding success, he "used to get dissed" by women ("Back then hos didn't want me/ Now I'm hot, hos all on me"). There's a sting of pathos here, and in Jones' paranoia about the pack he runs with-- that "even back then all they did was pretend" ("A lot of homies/ Some friends and some phony"). He matches his baroque mood-- the ego, the materialism, and the acid of a high-school reject-turned-arriviste-- to a baroque score. Here, the laid-back austerity of Houston rap gives way to a rich, almost ecclesiastic pomp: pianos, violins, cathedral bells, even a children's choir. The drama is menacing, down to the chorus, as kids belt threats in sing-song harmony. Shorn of the genre's lively neighborhood scenes, slang, and sound, the narcissistic "Mr. Jones" paints not a three-dimensional hometown landscape, but a flat and strangely grim self-portrait.