Raekwon Presents: Icewater

The album cover of Icewater’s debut release, Polluted Water, makes it abundantly clear who the star of the show is. Raekwon occupies a large portion of the CD cover and rightfully so; he is one of the executive producers of this album and along with a few of his friends, the only draw and salvaging aspect of this debut release. Of the 17 tracks, four are left for the Staten Island foursome (Polite, Stumik, Problem Child and Donnie Cash) to show their skills without a major label artist to carry the show. Although Rae may have prearranged it in order to ease the group into the eardrums of fans drawn by the Wu affiliation, the idea may have backfired. "Animal,” "Actin’ Fly,” "Murda” and "Move” simply don’t stack up lyrically against tracks rescued by featured artists such as Raekwon, Three 6 Mafia and Busta Rhymes. On "Love Don’t Cost (A Thing),” the hook is so terrible that Rae should have made an extra call to Mary J. Blige or Nate Dogg to help out. This track also features a sleeper line from Meth stating he is "…still puffin on smoke, while the critics still on they knees and still suckin’ off Ghost.” Overall, the album sounds like a work in progress and may only be worth it to hear some new lines from Meth and Rae. Also featured are Remy Ma, Rick Ross, Jagged Edge and Flo.