Lloyd Banks Hunger For More CD

Personnel: Lloyd Banks (rap vocals); Eminem, 50 Cent, Nate Dogg, Snoop Dogg, The Game, Tony Yayo, Young Buck (rap vocals).
Lloyd Banks' being a member of the G-Unit posse, click, crew, whatever, means that the release of his debut is a huge event with a massive storm cloud of positive and negative hype looming above. Mixtapes had boasted it's the second coming, message boards had already declared it a disaster, but when you get down to it, all you're left with is a CD to throw in the player -- a 120-mm-diameter disc of polycarbonate that's either going to have you bobbing your head to the beat or wondering what else you should have bought. Decide whether you can tolerate, ignore, or devour all the usual G-Unit boasts, brags, and threats, and know that The Hunger for More is another solid release from the crew and is a couple steps down from 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' and a step above G-Unit's Beg for Mercy. Know too that there's no "In da Club" here. Banks goes more for the long lyrical flows compared to 50's penchant for catchy chants, but there's no filler and there's about four or five tracks to add to the crew's hall of fame. With its marching-band snare and frantic loop, "Playboy" is the first contender, and one of the tracks that breaks away from the usual G-Unit thuggish funk. The stately "Warrior" is struck from the mold -- as are the great "I'm So Fly" and "On Fire" -- but it's all part of the album's great bouncing-between-the-two structure and perhaps executive producer 50 Cent's plan. To his credit, 50's given Banks plenty of room to explain himself; you could trim about three minutes of G-Unit propaganda and still have an album. Anyone questioning Banks' lyrical skills only needs to check his vivid picture of life on the streets, "Til the End." The frank narrative turns chilling as the rapper observes that crack addicts are part of picture -- easy to dismiss losers when they're strangers but devastating when it's your family. There are many more moments that are striking enough to rise above the hype and drama, and even guest stars Snoop Dogg and Eminem end up just passers through in Banks' world. To define yourself as a complex individual in the G-Unit clan is a difficult task, but here's a rapper who can do it. The Hunger for More starts with the sound of a money counter flipping -- a perfectly G-Unit opening -- but in the end it's totally Banks. 50 Cent seems comfortable with this, but maybe even he missed some of the irony in the album's title. ~ David Jeffries
Queens, New York-born Lloyd Banks couldn't have asked for a better stage on which to emerge. With 50 Cent's sudden ascension in 2003, his band of longtime mixtape stars, G-Unit, received a dose of national attention on the sturdy BEG FOR MERCY. The three-pronged attack of G-Unit is, as its name would imply, a collective effort, but on that record Banks repeatedly stole the show with his uncompromising, yet poetic rhymes and confident, wry delivery.
Banks makes his hotly anticipated debut with THE HUNGER FOR MORE, an album whose title sums up the tough, yet introspective artist, a ravenous rapper who devours words hungrily. The world is spinning around nonstop in Banks's brain, and there is clearly not enough time for it all to get out. However, in the course of THE HUNGER FOR MORE, he tackles everything from the simple topics of love and sex and life on the streets to problems like bad karma and getting racially profiled at the airport. His paramount ability may be his talent for taking a timeworn topic and transforming it into something fresh, as on "I Get High" (fittingly featuring 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg) and "If You So Gangsta." Banks deftly balances the hardcore, the poetic, and the melodic, and THE HUNGER FOR MORE portends great things for the rapper.Rolling Stone (p.112) - 3 stars out of 5 - "'On Fire' is deliriously addictive....[Banks] raps each verse as if his entire career depends on it."