Consumer Guide Album

Yo Yo: You Better Ask Somebody [EastWest, 1993]
Her voice has always suggested the honeyed grit of an Irma Thomas or a Jackie Moore. Here it gets richer as her timing gets sharper, and the beats could make you squeal. Eschewing soul steals, her latest production crew samples straight-up funk and other rap records, as in the corkscrew funk of "Givin' It Up," built off a reconstructed Mtume riff, and the easygoing sing-along of "Pass It On," which credits Cypress Hill and "Poison" as well an obscure Webster Lewis track: five Intelligent Black Women pass a blunt and a mic, boasting about how fucked up they get in the kind of morally retrograde one-off that's given sin good word of mouth since snakes could talk. And then there's a Yo Yo lyric Ice Cube couldn't come near. "Letter to the Pen," in which a loyal gangsta bitch risks her neck keeping her imprisoned "soldier"'s "pockets fat" as his buddies outside play him and his buddies inside swear she's fucking him over, is as touching as love songs get. It's not "reality"; it may not even be realistic, though I doubt it. But it evokes a reality, one that remains poorly documented after five solid years of hardcore--a reality in which even the hardcore faithful somehow live through the shit. A-