The big question here is, how do you fuck this recipe up? 1) Take one of the hottest club producers, who has produced hits for Jay-Z, Beyonce, DMX, Eve, Cassidy, and countless others; 2) give him a major label album deal; 3) let simmer for a year or two; 4) and the end result should be a hit record, right? In the case of Swizz Beatz’s One Man Band Man, not so much.

As to why a producer – who is paid tens-of-thousands of dollars for some of the hottest beats heard in the industry – would outsource his production for his album is beyond us. Swizz got it right on “It’s Me Bitches”, a club-knocking anthem that finds him drilling his “chillin’ in a beamer / listen to Ether” credo into your sub-conscious, until you are right there singing along. Same goes for the second single, “Money In The Bank”, which mixes a super-chipmunked hook with an anti-save-a-hoe message, that just would have your head cracking along in gleeful stupidity. And that’s the appeal of Swizz – the bounce (Hey! Hey! Hey!), and the repetitive, infectious chants that extend themselves to songs like “Big Munny” and “Top Down” (but not as quite as well as the singles).

Where the big mistake is made, is not sticking to the script. We like Swizzy’s beats, and expect to hear them on the oddly titled One Man Band Man LP, which in fact, actually, is the brainchild of several men, many which you’ve never heard of. Producer Needlez and guest emcee Drag-On check in for “Bust Ya Gunz”, while Snags (who?) guest produces “You Know Your Boy Did That”, both of which merely plod along, lacking the trademark Swizz Beatz energy.

The other big mistake here is Swizz trying to elevate himself to higher artistic levels, when it’s clear that he really only excels in hopping club tracks. Look, we’re all for intelligent hip-hop….but stick to what you are good at. Behold, as he attempts to bequeath his brilliance over the somber pianos of  “The Funeral”, which more or less boils down to “dying is scary”. As if things could not get any worse, we also have “Take A Picture” – a remake of the Bill Withers song of the same name – which simply bastardizes the original sample, with Swizzy going on about the amazing qualities of the camera phone.  Finally, the icing on the cake is the Coldplay sampled “Part Of The Plan”, which is a complete lift, but comes off very trite after both Kanye and Jay actually got Chris Martin to sing on their albums.

The end result is a mess. Again, the main issue here is that Swizz somehow got it in his head that he is a rapper first, producer second, (when he is the opposite) and hired other producers to handle much of the beat work on One Man Band Man. Truth be told, we aren’t mad at Swizz Beatz when he’s just being himself – he’s great to dumb out and get drunk in the club to, and that’s all we wanted from his album.