Young Gunz are blank slates. On a great beat, the duo of Chris and Neef will sound great. On a terrible beat, they'll sound terrible. Both members have essentially the same flow: A prim, conversational mumble that usually turns sing-songy on the hooks. (Chris sounds slightly more gruff; Neef is slightly more nimble.) Their voices don't carry a hint of emotion or personality. They sound exactly the same rapping about guns as they do about girls, and neither one ever says anything remotely quotable.
And so Brothers From Another doesn't really belong to either Chris or Neef. The album belongs instead to producer Chad "Wes" Hamilton, who turns in seven of the album's 12 tracks. Hamilton knows his way around a drum machine, and his tracks for Brothers From Another have a slick, chilly electro pulse, like the skeletal booming drum machines of mid-80s Marley Marl with the rough edges polished off and replaced them with a glossy futuristic sheen. "Don't Stop (YG Party)" supports a rippling marimba loop with eerie, rolling bass tones.
"It's the Life" has a spare, empty shuffle and a ghostly, sustained synth wash. On the thug love ballad "Don't Keep Me Waiting" guests 112 coo like a prepubescent New Edition while Duran Duran cheese guitars and a popping slap bass swoop trough the track. The tracks that Hamilton didn't produce have the same lustrous throb. On his two tracks, for instance, Swizz Beats forgoes hype-man yelling and Jay-Z vocal samples for amazing swirling pianos on "Beef" and canned electro synths on lead single "Set It Off". The one glaring exception is the unbelievably obnoxious Kanye West pianos-and-string ballad "Grown Man Pt. 2", featuring one of Kanye's unbearable loverman verses and a hook with John Legend doing his best to impersonate the world's most generic lounge singer.
On Young Gunz' 2004 debut Tough Luv, the duo was constantly overshadowed by infinitely more talented guests like Jay-Z and Beanie Sigel. The few guest rappers on Brothers From Another (Daz, Memphis Bleek, Pooda Brown) fit the Gunners' personality vacuum. But with Hamiton's glittering, clanking tracks, personality is beside the point. Meet the rap robots of tomorrow.
