Beatnuts

In 2004 the Beatnuts returned with another album (Milk Me) on another label (Rykodisc), and though they'd long struggled to regain their footing in the commercially disappointing wake of their Loud Records heyday five years earlier, they continued to release first-rate East Coast hip-hop. There's nothing exceptional about Milk Me, granted, but it's another in a line of solid Beatnuts efforts -- sure to please fans, if not overly impress them and win new ones in the process. The two Nuts -- Psycho Les and JuJu -- produce all their own beats, as they often do, and they rap over them in a fairly carefree, insincere manner. A few notable guests show up for the party -- Greg Nice, Akon, Freeway, Rahzel, Roc Raida -- and those guests are featured on the handful of standout songs: "Hot," "Find Us (In the Back of the Club)," "U Nomsayin," and "Confused Rappers."