South Park Mexican / 8-Ball

Let’s forget for a moment South Park Mexican’s legal troubles and attempt to judge Never Change on its own merits. Yes, you can listen to the Mexican’s latest without all the percolating drama getting in the way. What you won’t be able to get past is the mixed message the Mexican is dropping.

SPM’s flat refusal to admit he’s come up in the world gives the album an uneven swagger. In fact, Never Change is a paradoxical title considering how SPM spends most of the album going on about how much he has changed. “Good ol’ days I won’t forget / While I write on this laptop in this jet / With the Universal Records president,” he says on the opening track, “Screens Falling.” It’s difficult to picture SPM as the same ol’ Hillwood hustla when he says he’s “putting 17 strip dancers all through school.”

Musically, Never Change doesn’t quite have the thuggish-ruggish sheen of SPM’s previous albums. The Mexican produces most of the tracks himself, and his synthesizer-and-drum-machine configurations and singing hooks are simplistic and pedestrian. We’ve always known SPM to be a minimalist, but this crude, basic approach makes him sound like a half-assed MC who can’t afford a stable of capable producers. Some tracks, like “I Must Be High” and the already established “Mexican Radio” (which may be the first and last time anyone revives the memory of Wall of Voodoo), do manage to click instantly with the listener. But if SPM is trying to keep the memory of DJ Screw alive, he shouldn’t leave his power tools at home. The three screwed tracks aren’t screwed enough.

8-Ball fares slightly better on his latest solo effort, Almost Famous. Of course, it helps that he has an assortment of competent producers at his disposal, as well as cats like Ludacris, P. Diddy and road dog MJG to back him up on the mike. With them along for the ride, most of the songs on Famous ring like a call to battle — Gulf Coast fight music that could also provide the bounce for booty-shaking.

But it’s not just the jumped-up beats that elevate this album above mediocrity. It’s also 8-Ball’s delivery. Like a heavyweight contender throwing out body shots, 8-Ball serves up every verse as if he had just heard fightin’ words. On “Spit,” he promises, “Hard rhymes I bust / Crush punks to dust / Weak studio gangstas / You can’t fuck with us.”

What 8-Ball is slinging on Famous isn’t all that different from SPM’s message on Change, except 8-Ball freely admits he wants to move on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky (on his own terms, of course). As for SPM, don’t go changing just to please us, but don’t be afraid to admit it when you do.