Year of Release: 2006
Record Label: Diplomats/Koch Records
It seems that after having done my reviews of Christmas on Death Row, High Fo’ Xmas, and Christmas in Tha Dogghouse, I found that sometimes mixing the holiday spirit with hip-hop can sometimes be a good and bad thing. Okay, maybe “bad” is pushing it, but sometimes you have the good, like the Death Row Christmas album (Believe it or not, it was actually good), then you have the ones that you can joke about like High Fo’ Xmas (Though the Eazy-E Christmas song isn’t far behind), and then you have the ones that left a lot more to be desired, like Christmas in Tha Dogghouse (Though there WERE some good tracks on it).
First off, I can’t say that I was ever a big fan of Jim Jones. I don’t dislike the guy, I just never really heard much of his stuff outside of “We Fly High,” and just thinking about that song took me back to 2006/2007 when that was all over the airwaves. Then again, I can’t say that I got into the Diplomats, either, though I don’t mind Cam’ron or Juelz Santana, as I do enjoy some of their material. The first time I found out about this album was when I read a review about Christmas on Death Row and this was mentioned in the first paragraph. I thought it was a joke until I looked it up on Amazon. I figured that this would be perfect for me to write a review on it.
The main thing that should be said is this album kind of falls in the middle depending on how you look at it. Before I get into the album, the album insert that had a photo of the Capo himself with a snowy backdrop and a quote that said “I wanted to make a Christmas album for kids in the hood and shit like that.” I can’t fault him for that, as the Christmas-related tracks did sort of capture the spirit of the holidays. For example, I liked how “Dipset Xmas Time” had its own spin on Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time.” I personally am not a fan that song, but “Dipset Christmas Time” was actually a decent track. Also, “Ballin’ on Xmas” was a good hip-hop song with a Christmas theme. It was also good to hear the beat to “Christmas in Hollis” from Run-DMC, whom sampled “Back Door Santa” from Clarence Carter. “Wish List” is actually standout track with mentions of how life in the ghetto was like in the holiday season.
However, the biggest problem that this album has is that only the first five tracks are related to Christmas as the other half isn’t. Hell, I got the Best Buy version in the mail with contained additional three songs and they weren’t related to Christmas. Not to say that those other cuts are bad, though some could have been better, but I wondered if Jim Jones wanted to have some songs that didn’t make the cut on Hustler’s P.O.M.E. (Product of My Environment), which came out a month prior to this one. Out of all of the tracks that weren’t related to Christmas, the only one that stood out was the remix to “We Fly High.”
This album isn’t terrible. At first, I thought that it would be kind of a joke Christmas hip-hop album, but the first five tracks are actually pretty good because it did follow the Christmas theme. But seriously, this album COULD be listened to outside of the holiday season, just as long as you don’t listen to the first five songs. Hell, it would be better if the other five (Or eight, depending on which version you have) was burned onto a separate CD so that you could listen to it during the other parts of the year, while the first five songs can be put onto its own disc (Or playlist depending on how people do it these days).
It’s a soft recommend from me.
Top Five Tracks:
- Ballin’ On Xmas
- Dipset Xmas Time
- If Everyday Was Xmas
- Wish List
- Have a Happy Xmas
Honorable Mention: We Fly High (Remix)
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