I feel like I should like this more because of what album it is, but...I just didn't. Not my style.

I loved this. N.Y. State Of Mind is on my running playlist so I was already familiar with it. At some point a few years ago I started seeing rap and hip hop as spoken word poetry, and ECR seems to have a lot of people pouring their souls out on the page, describing their lives and the hardships of people around them. "Life's A Bitch" is full of this. "I woke up early on my born day, I'm 20, it's a blessin'" is quite literally "you're lucky if you live this long as a black man in New York". The style and the genre of the music may not be for everyone, but the messages in the lyrics are really moving.