Noreaga began his career as a staple in New Yotk rap music alongside his partner Capone in the late 90’s as the duo Copone-N-Noreaga. Earlier in the millennium the incarceration of Capone helped Noreaga’s career somewhat the same way that Pimp C’s jail time has helped Bun B’s career as of late. The only difference is the way that Nore has considerably fallen off since his “Superthug” days. After signing with Roc-A-Fella a few years ago and dropping no albums Nore finally put out Ya Tu Sabe on Roc-La-Familia to little fanfare last year. Fresh off the majors and back to the streets Nore reloads with his latest attempt Noreality.

Swizz Beatz laces the album opener with severe amounts of his signature bass patterns on “Set It Off”. Even help from Three 6 Mafia and Jadakiss & Kurupt on “That Club Shit” and “Throw Em Under The Bus” respectively, can’t save the tracks from leaving a sour taste in the listener’s mouth. Nore snatches up one of his mixtape favorites in “Cocaine Cowboy” and intricately places the narcotic informative effort early on in the collection. Things take a slight turn for the better as Styles P shows up over Dame Grease’s beat game on the smoke heavy “Sour Diesel”. Nore makes a sarcastic cosign of Maury’s number one topic on the halfway serious “Paternity Test” where he ends up delivering a noteworthy message to all those promiscuous baby mamas out there.

Producer Boola laces Nore with a drum heavy backdrop tailored nearly identical to some of the MC’s previous beats on “I’ma Get You”. Two of Nore’s ex-Roc-A-Fella teammates Tru Life and Peedi Peedi show up on the album’s surprisingly raunchy high point “Eat Pussy”. On the ultra knocking “The Rap Game” Nore carefully chronicles his rise, fall, and perseverance in the industry. The Alchemist comes through with the album’s most intriguing beat on “Drink Champ” where he uses a hypnotizing opera suggesting sound bite as Nore runs down the list of everyone he’s out-drank throughout his career.

If Noreality were a game then it would be a winner thanks to its sharp second half performance, but unfortunately for Nore this is not a game. The first half of the album offers nothing in the way of creativity or just good old fashioned rap music. Full of thin beats and scattered subject matter the lack of musical integrity displayed on the first six tracks outweighs the heavy bass saturated pleasures of the last seven or so. One positive thing can be said in the midst of all this though, atleast Noreality is marginally better than that reggaton shit he put out last year!

VERDICT – 11 / 20
LYRICS:3
PRODUCTION: 3
DELIVERY: 3
CONSISTENCY: 2