Space Age 4 Eva

Album Review

After the thoughtful reflection of In Our Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1999), which had cast Eightball & MJG as been-there, done-that Southern rap sages and earned widespread acclaim in the process, the duo responded with the lighthearted Space Age 4 Eva. This album, Eightball & MJG's first non-Suave House release, returns to the space-age pimping that had been the duo's stock-in-trade for years. The club-orientated tracks stand out, particularly the Swizz Beatz-produced "At the Club" and the DJ Quik-produced "Buck Bounce," both of which pair Eightball & MJG with non-Southern big-name producers for the first time. Elsewhere, a pair of Jazze Pha productions also stand out, the meditative "Thingz" and the aggressive "Pimp Hard," as do the celebratory title track and the intense album-closer, "Thank God." While these individual moments feature some of the best production work of Eightball & MJG's career to date, the album itself as a whole plays like a mishmash, more a collection of big-name producer collaborations than a cohesive whole, which many of the duo's previous albums had been.