Thug World Order

11/05/2002 9:00 PM, LAUNCH
Dan Leroy

In the two years since its last release, the Bone Thugs camp has seemed alternately Bizzy, Layzie, and finally just Krayzie, as battles with the group's label and within the quartet made a follow-up seem like Wish-ful thinking. But the crew that put Cleveland on the hip-hop map has returned with an album that might remind Nelly fans just who pioneered his Midwest swing.

Always among the most musical rappers around, thanks to their ability to harmonize as well as spit rapid-fire rhymes, the Bones have created a collection any hip-popper would envy, piling on hook after sumptuous hook on the ace single "Get Up And Get It" and flipping Phil Collins’s "Take Me Home" into a gently bouncing anthem. Yet the pervasive anger and frustration keep Thug World Order out of kiddie territory; as usual, the group seems always to be looking heavenward for release from earthly problems, in the grand troubled tradition of Tupac and Biggie. It's a combination of beauty and despair more common to other genres, but it makes for some wonderfully uneasy listening.