No matter how hard he tried,
Cowboy Troy
never quite shook the impression that his 2005 debut,
Loco Motive
, was a novelty -- and he tried hard, working the record for a long time, eventually scoring a plum gig as a co-host of
CMT
's singing competition
Nashville Star
, which raised his profile considerably and revealed an amiable, relaxed charisma unheard on his desperate-to-please debut. But no matter what he did, he never erased the perception that his
country
-
rap
fusion was no more than shtick, quite likely because the hammy, ham-handed
was played entirely for laughs, and his clumsy rapping suggested that he didn't have the skills to really succeed as a rapper, so he turned toward novelty instead.
Troy
intends to blast these preconceptions out of the water on his second album,
Black in the Saddle
, whose defiant title alone suggests the aggression of this record even if it doesn't hint at how truly hard this hits. Where
was a conscious
pop
crossover, the kind of record that can score you a gig on a national TV show,
is lean and mean, targeted at eternal adolescents who love wrestling, beer, and hick chicks in equal measure. If the debut sounded like a throwback to 1990, this sophomore effort is a throwback to 2000, the era when
rock
ruled, since this not only is fueled by
heavy metal
guitars, it also has a dose of that genre's self-pitying angst (
"Take Your Best Shot Now,"
"Paranoid Like Me"
). This gives
a sonic cohesion -- only interrupted by the pure glitter-ball
disco
of
"Blackneck Boogie,"
a blatant and not entirely unenjoyable stab at a dance craze -- yet it also fits
's newly dexterous verbal attack. He rarely stumbles and never sounds stiff, which is a considerably improvement over the awkward flow on the debut, but he still has a considerable Achilles' heel in his tin ear. His delivery may have improved but he still is spitting out some of the goofiest lines to ever be uttered by a rapper. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine