With a forceful but unhurried style of rapping, Lil' O get his message across in a big way on DA FAT RAT WIT DA CHEEZE. While his mindset and lyrical focus are set squarely on thug life and gangsta scenarios, the hardcore topics and ghetto-reality raps are offset by some clever touches in both the words and the music. For instance, the sophisticated vocal harmonies on the chorus of "Beg, Steal and Borrow" sweeten the bitter pill of a song about doing whatever one must in order to make it on the mean streets. In addition to the grim slice-of-life depictions, Lil' O also manages to add dashes of color to his raps by the use of relatively expansive imagery and a pop-cultural lexicon that finds him name-checking everyone from Spike Lee to Oprah. DA FAT RAT hits hard, but through skillful use of production, it goes down with a surprising degree of smoothness.