Album Review: Punk Goes Crunk...part two.

Alright, I left off my review of the CD Punk Goes Crunk about halfway through. It's time to pick up where I left off and let you guys know what I think of the rest of the CD.

Next up is a cover of The Seed, by Philly's own funk group, the Roots, who can now be seen as the house band on the train wreck that is Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The only real issue with this song is it sounds exactly like the Roots version, it just has a different singer. Seriously, if you play them back to back the instrumentals sound exactly alike. Still, it's a decent song.

I feel like I'm not paying enough respect to the Roots, but I'm sorry, because the next song is the best song on the CD in my opinion. The song is called "Still Fly", originally by the hip-hop power group Big Tymers. The cover, done by The Devil Wears Prada, is absolutely amazing in every way. The band really puts a lot into the song, and you can tell that they worked hard to make this song their own. I once read that in an interview the members of Big Tymers said they thought the cover was better than the original. You know you've made an awesome song when the guys that wrote the song in the first place say you did a better job than them.

The next song is another one of the best on the CD. The original song is Umbrella, by Rihanna. The cover is done by All Time Low. This song is so good it got decent airtime on alternative rock radio stations. I feel like the All Time Low got lucky, because this CD came out right when Umbrella was on the charts, so they were covering a single that was still charting, and so they got the most exposure right off the bat. It's still a sweet cover though. The band did a good job of taking a hip-hop song and turning it into a banging rock song.

Next is probably the most famous "crunk" song on the CD: Notorious Thugs by the late great Biggie Smalls. The cover is done by Scary Kids Scaring Kids. At first, I hated this song; I would always skip it. I just didn't like the intro and the song is kind of slow so it got old pretty fast. There's not a lot of movement either; it's pretty much the same song the entire time. However, recently I started to really listen to the song, and it's not that bad In fact, Notorious Thugs has become one of my favorite songs on the CD. It's a nice wind-down song, which you don't expect to find on a Punk Goes...CD.

Unfortunately, this run on good songs is disrupted by the terrible cover of Gin and Juice by Snoop Dogg. The cover is done by The Escape Frame. Honestly, this is the only song that I don't ever want to listen to. I'm not sure what The Escape Frame sounds like most of the time, but on this track their singer sounds absolutely awful.

The last two songs, Hey Ya and Tennessee, remind me a lot of the first two songs. Their good enough, but they don't really go out of the way to impress me. I mean, their nice songs, but I feel like a lot more could have been done to make them better.

Overall, Punk Goes Crunk is an amazing idea with a pretty good execution. Some of the songs are absolute gems that should get more playtime, but others are blunders that need to be forgotten as mistakes of a mash-up CD in a bizarre music industry. I'll give the CD a B- overall. It's good, but it's not something you'll listen to for the rest of your life.

Maybe someday I'll review Punk Goes Pop 2, the latest entrance in the series.

Maybe.