Songs like the Pharoahe Monch featured "The Life", "We Thugs (My Niggas)" with the rest of the LOX, the heartfelt "My Brother", the M.O.P. Styles lyrically is at his best, and while using a lot of lesser known producers at the time minus Alchemist and Swizz, he crafts a ton of gems through the project. I say almost, because the tracklist is exhaustive and should be cut down, but for the most part, this album works on many levels. This album is as close to a classic as I've heard from their entire camp, as Styles mixed every sound we would want to hear from him and made it work for this album almost perfectly. Styles makes the best albums in The LOX, and in my opinion, he's the best member of the trio. If you had any doubt that this was going to be no. While Kiss Tha Game Goodbye isn't a classic, it's still a very solid listen overall, the tracklist just needs to be trimmed down some. Kiss Tha Game Goodbye is also infamous for giving us the epic Styles and Jada classic "We Gonna Make It", which has made the line "fuck the frail shit" a massive part of hip hop in one way or another. With production from Timbaland, The Neptunes, DJ Premier, The Alchemist, Just Blaze, and of course Swizz, Jada gives us solid verses, exaggerated street tales, hit singles, a ton of great features from names like DMX, Nas, Nate Dogg, Snoop, Carl Thomas, and of course the Ruff Ryders crew. This isn't the album I expected from Jada on his debut, so I was a bit disappointed with the commercial direction and the lengthy tracklist, but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this album a lot when it first came out. This is a disappointing album, yet it's also a really good album to me. Still, it's an enjoyable introduction to the Yonkers crew. The title track, the Jada and Styles solo records, "The Heist Part 1", and the Biggie dedication "We'll Always Love Big Poppa" are all standouts, and if they trimmed about 7 songs off of this album, it could possibly be a classic.
5 choice, but oddly enough I feel like Money, Power, Respect has aged better than Kiss Of Death.
I've since my changed my tune, as I've grown to appreciate the music and I put this on my list over Jadakiss' second album, which was my initial no. Not that Bad Boy couldn't be gritty as well, but it was a much more polished sound that at the time, I wasn't too fond of.
Truth be told, I was young and listening to every freestyle I could find from the streets and The LOX always seemed to bring solid verses and tracks that were better suited for a more street centered label. It's the style of Bad Boy that rubbed me the wrong way more than anything, but whatever the case may be, I wasn't too fond of the album when it first released. I remember when this album dropped, I oddly enough wasn't a big fan of it.
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