Various Artists - Blade 2 OST

Standing out in a homogenous hip-hop landscape like a pair of glow-in-the-dark Halloween vampire fangs, the Blade II soundtrack pairs up a litany of rap notables with their electronic music counterparts in an attempt to generate sonic experimentation (and an accompanying crossover fan base, inevitably). Does it work? Yes and no. For every brilliant team up or truly interesting juxtaposition, there's three times as many useless combinations that should have been scrapped at the planning stages. Yet when the mix does work out, the results are genuinely astounding - only making you wish every track could have been as good. Cypress Hill and Roni Size walk away with the finest track on the album, "Child of The West." Hyperactive drum-and-bass wouldn't normally seem like a natural fit for Cypress' stoned, laidback rhythms, but the two worlds come together as if on instinct, generating an aggressive yet exotic blend that fits the film's mood perfectly. Another unexpected match comes from Eve and Fatboy Slim on "Cowboy," where Norman Cook's buoyant, reggae-tinged beat over Eve's "where my bitches at?" chant blend perfectly; I can easilly see this track whipping crowds into a frenzy at a dance club of any genre. Yet such winning combos are the exception, not the rule. Contributions from heavyweights like Busta Rhymes, Moby, and The Roots are at best unexceptional - and at worst sadly prosaic. Even such seemingly perfect partnerships like Redman/Gorillaz and Bubba Sparxxx/The Crystal Method result in little more than highly polished electro-blandness. While this might have made for a halfway interesting video game score, it certainly doesn't bode well as soundtrack music, let alone as an individual album. As would be expected from any project this ambitious, not every pairing really pans out - how could it, when few of the artists were ever even in the studio at the same time? However, the biggest problem was not a lack of legitimate "collaborations," but the fact that the lyrics tended to fall on the generic side of things. It's unfortunate that, with the exception of Mos Def's nomadic and introspective take on his track with Massive Attack, "I Against I", few of the other rappers stepped up to the plate with rhymes that went beyond how "tough and/or wild and/or pimpin" each of them could be. You'd figure that a film about futuristic kung-fu vampires for crying out loud might inspire some lyrical content that's a tad more creative than lukewarm freestyle boasts. Yet the disc is not a total disappointment, as it's truly dope tracks prove; while those few successes don't justify the flops, they do generate hope for future sonic mixtures. Hopefully by the time the Blade III soundtrack cuts its way through (a boy-band/death metal fusion perhaps?), the producers will try and make the musical edges as sharp as their namesake. [www.blade2soundtrack.com]