Most everything you need to know about horny, go-getting Malibu newcomer Shwayze can be gleaned from this line on "Polaroid," off his self-titled debut: "Woke up with a semi-hard dick/In a fat chick/Three this week/Call that a hat trick/But everybody know hockey ain't for black kids."
Yeah, it's that bad, but the odd thing is that Shwayze doesn't present himself as a typical misogynistic ringtone rapper; his partly sung, partly rapped, always-stoned-and-sometimes-pissed-off tracks recall a mixture of Citizen Cope, Kidz in the Hall and Jack Johnson. If he didn't so often bring the obnoxious punch lines, we might actually have an album here. The music is frequently excellent, such as the adrenalized throwback of a lead-off track, "Roamin'," and the Dave Navarro-featured closer, "Flashlight." The latter is an insistent, G-funk rocker with a pretty hook that you want to like, before Shwayze starts spewing BS like: "I got a blankie/I'll lay it on the sand sand/I went deep like the goddamn Grand Can/Grand Slam, bacon and the ham." There's something obnoxiously entitled about this blanket-fucker and MTV reality show star, and something extremely unsettling about his hipster misogyny.
