The Heat Is On (Scotti Bros., 1995)

This is one of those albums that you see in the store and wonder, "What the hell is this?"  You circle a couple of times, but return to it and ask yourself if it could be worth the $3.99 price tag from the cut-out bin.  After the third go-round, your curiosity becomes aroused, so you try it out, even though you know nothing about it.  You pop it in your CD player, press play, and immediately realized you've been duped.  Damn you, Scotti Brothers!  The Heat Is On sounds like a record executive concoction designed to cross over to the mainstream charts.  I can almost hear them now: "We want this one to sound like 'Flex,' this one to sound like 'Informer,' this one to sound like 'Mr. Loverman,' this one to sound like 'Boombastic,' etc."   Thus, the production value is very slick, but the contents are largely hollow.   Still, that doesn't mean that The Heat Is On is entirely useless: "Beef in a Baggie" and "Rewind" provide some decent hip-hop beats, while "Gimmie Your Loving" and "Searching for Love" are sultry numbers featuring Mikey Spice and Luciano respectively (the latter taking the chorus from Bobby Caldwell's R&B classic "What You Won't Do for Love").  This quartet of songs exemplifies the mix of musical styles on this album: part hip-hop reggae, part "Flex"-ish lovers dancehall, with one or two straight dancehall cuts.   Other than that, "Braggie Braggie" incorporates an interesting Parliament sample, but the rest is stale at best, and at worst there's the Crystal Waters-esque house/dance crap-fest "Mr. D.J."  I don't know much about Gold Teet, but I believe he's a Jamaican DJ residing in America.  His vocals are OK -- similar to Terror Fabulous -- but he needs to break away from the mainstream influences and focus on his roots, dancehall.