Funkdoobiest Brothas Doobie Epic EPC 478381 2

Funkdoobiest are like an Ensleigh League version of Cypress Hill, with the same coach (top blunt-rap producer DJ Muggs) having to work with lesser talent, including the brother of Cypress Hill's B Real. Brothas Doobie sticks closely to the basic formula of their previous album: Muggs's loops and beats are as brash and funky as ever, but the terse, clipped diction offers sharply diminishing returns on the usual rap staples - notably several dreary vignettes of 'hood life, that most exhaustively documented of contemporary social milieux.

There's little character, and even less class, on display here. Where Cypress Hill broadened their appeal by exaggerating the gun and dope angles to the virtual exclusion of sex, Funkdoobiest lean heavily on a particularly nasty strain of tired B-Boy sexism. "Superheroes" is dumb comic- book fantasy stuff, but "Pussy Ain't Shit" plumbs new depths of gynaecological degradation, its dismissive claim that "Pussy ain't shit but lips and clits" leaving one suspecting that, just for once, violence might be preferable to sex. In their case, anyway.