Pacewon & Mr Green - The Only Color That Matters is Green

Pacewon hasn't lost the ability to flip a rhyme or tell a story, throughout The Only Color That Matters is Green he breezes along without breaking a sweat. There are some great lines throughout the album, Pace still has words for wack rappers:

I wanna pack they cds up and sell 'em back
I paid $12, just gimme $7 back
I'll even take it back to the store and get it wrapped

Songs like 'The Eye of the Needle' show that he's not just the cocky young rapper he was on 'Cowboys' and 'I Declare War', he's older, faced struggles and it shows on the best few songs on the album.

It's been a long time comin', I seen a lot of evil,
Felt a lot of pain, and I lost a lot of people,
Did a couple of things I really didn't need to,
Hurt a couple people that I really didn't mean to.
If I could turn time back, I would treat em regal.
Matter fact, I'd treat everybody equal.
Then my world might just be so peaceful
And I wouldn't view it through the eye of a needle.

What dissappoints about the album is that it mostly dwells in the past. Pace too easily slips into his old groove, he could almost have written some of the songs 10 years ago. Lots of the other songs are filled with reminisces, some of them work but the total effect is to make him sound old. Then there's 'The Joker', a diss of Eminem, one of his friends in the early days. He dissed him before with 'Rap Music' which was a strong track. However, 'The Joker' just makes Pace come off bitter. It's not a great note to end the album on and it stands in contrast with some of the better songs which show Pace moving on and growing. Mr Green's beats are solid but owe too much to DJ Premier and the early-mid 90s.

Overall, The Only Color That Matters is Green is an album that looks back more than forward both in content and style. It's solid but it could have been much more.

Stand out tracks: 'She Can Be So Cold' (with the White Stripes), 'The Eye of the Needle', 'Hip-Hop'.