Category F5 [Best Buy]

Audio Mixers: Matt Hennessy; The Legendary Traxster.
A half-decade after breaking through to the mass public as a cagey veteran with the smash "Slow Jams," the "world's fastest rapper" continues to consistently drop some of the most downright interesting records in the hip-hop universe. 2009's CATEGORY F5 is quite possibly Twista's tightest record to date. The album is both a whirlwind of language and a bloodletting, a reminder that the rapid-fire rapper possesses one of the most keen (and often underrated) wits in the game as well as one of its darkest minds. Twista is of the streets, but his task is not to extol the glory of the game, but to impassively chronicle the carnage through the 3-D glasses of his own messed-up mind. There's a born-into-it undercurrent to his narrative, his super-speedy flow acting as a subliminal machine gun, spit-firing words like "apocalypse" and "nauseous" into an already crackling air. And on it goes, reaching a high note on "Wetter," a sequel to an earlier beloved track, "Get It Wet," as Twista does what he does best, spitting furious about his Don Juan-level love for all the ladies in the world.