The Recession

Jeezy manages to keep a strong unified album together without ever getting monotonous or tired.

Jeezy has assembled a politically tinged disc that will sound spectacular blasting out of dashboard speakers for the rest of the year...assuming anyone can still afford to drive a car by then.

Young Jeezy balances commercial/ pop aspirations with core hip-hop sounds on The Recession, getting a lift from DJ Toomp, Drumma Boy, Midnight Black and longtime collaborator Shawty Redd on this sonically enjoyable follow-up to 2006's "The Inspiration."

There's a unique pleasure in hearing a once one-dimensional rapper discover complexity, and for that Recession is nearly indispensable.

With the expectations set high, The Recession doesn’t disappoint, though as with any of his albums, it would benefit from some truncation.

His first two albums were well-crafted, uncompromising in their focus, and exceptionally entertaining. The Recession makes it three.

The album touches upon economic issues without dwelling on them, and it captures the spirit of the times with an unerring precision.

Relistening, the porousness and vapidity of the material makes it pretty obvious that rapper Jeezy’s personality is one note, gruff and brash, forever and ever. But in the album’s waning moments, 'My President' erases any genuine qualms, sporting the record’s best Toomp impression.

Recession is silly, repetitive, and wildly unoriginal. Yet thanks to Jeezy's razor-blade rasp and goofy charisma, it's also strangely infectious.

If recession-era Jeezy sounds a lot like boom-time Jeezy--describing coke cooking and the cars one gets in reward—that’s because he has always fancied himself an educator, a Learning Annex lecturer, an inspirational-desktop-calendar hustler.

Jeezy may have the most charismatic voice in rap now--a fierce but fine-gravel shout that hits your ears soft like a whisper--and his beat selection remains pitch perfect--but Jeezy still doesn't realise that selling drugs was good only for Jeezy. He's a cartoon, a proforma thug, and when he tries to relate he fails miserably. [Dec 2008, p.74]

Bolstered by a gimmick and a catchphrase, the album is by-and-large Jeezy qua Jeezy, and the new fissures aren't enough to keep pundits gabbing.

Even if it falls a distant third out of the first three, the scattershot Recession is still a welcome and even risky step forward, one carried by its highlights and the newfound awareness that the cocaine grind isn't everything.

The Atlanta crack rapper's third album is largely a faithful rehash of his first two platters, which transformed him from unrepentant hustler to unlikely inspirational figure.

While the usual approach is still good for a certain seductive brawniness, there's not much here that Jeezy hasn't done before.

The Recession's singles are exceptional, but the filler suffers from a detached and dispirited sound.

Putting out an album called The Recession right now, and draping the American flag over your head on its cover, comes with expectations of politically conscious ruminations. Instead, we get more of the same

The Recession, then, is a portrait of the artist as an over-his-head young man.