Sharp on All 4 Corners: Corner 1

Maybe his breakthrough hit "Tell Me When to Go" was a threat, as the Bay Area slang king known as E-40 has kept a brutally prolific release schedule since 2011. It was then he released a quadrilogy of albums with Revenue Retrievin': Day Shift, Night Shift. Overtime Shift, and Graveyard Shift all landing within the year, then The Block Brochure: Welcome to the Soil 1 landed in 2012, kicking off a series that would drop no less than six albums over the next two years. The 2014 release Sharp on All 4 Corners: Corner 1 sets in motion another quadrilogy that uses The Block Brochure's two-year roll-out plan, but E-40 fans should check their already beat-up wallets, because this one balls hard. The abundance of minimal techno beats and hyphy lyrics found here all fall within E-40's comfort zone, and yet, he attacks these cuts with the punch and and the throwback nastiness of 2006's My Ghetto Report Card. Then, there's "Red Cup" with T-Pain, B.o.B., and Kid Ink helping to bring the Bay Area strip club anthem into 2014 as lyrics like "She can make some Guess Jeans stretch like polyester/Call me Lord Bobby, I'ma bless her with the scepter" say all there needs to be said. Rounding it all out are a couple ambitious numbers that border on experimentation ("Paint the Picture" is a ghostly take on cloud rap while the crooked "2 Fingers" sounds like a Zapp album malfunctioning) and in the end, E-40's unwieldy discography becomes frustrating primarily because these high points can get lost in the woods. ~ David Jeffries