And for old school fans, “Top of the Line” and it’s Mouse production could be the last straw towards hitting the Stop button (though Trill Fam fans will no doubt eat it up, and I’ll admit I’m a small fan). Not really a good look from a guy that used to be one of the South’s most entertaining personalities. In fact, by “My Money Don’t Fold” I’m usually ready to start skipping around and looking for favorites. Combined with the mixtape-quality production, as an old school Cash Money fan I find it incredibly hard to get into this album. He seems to bend his will to whichever artists are featured on the track or whichever producer he’s working with. Thanks to the heavy amount of features from new school MCs like Dorrough, Shawty Lo and some relative unknowns as well as vocalists like Bobby Valentino and Pleasure P, not much of Cocky & Confident feels like a Juvenile album, either. But most of the time, after hearing 30 seconds of a given song it’s pretty easy to predict where the track’s going. Songs like “Back Back” and “Break It Down” do just enough to remind us what made Juvenile such a dominant force on the radio in the ’90s and early part of this decade. So unabashed Juvenile fans will certainly enjoy what this album has to offer. But I’m thankful because, despite a lot of generic music and Juvenile obviously trying to appeal to new fanbases in the wake of New Orleans’ changed guard, Juvenile himself is mostly the same person we met up with on Reality Check. I mean don’t get me wrong, Juvenile sounds way too much like Rick Ross on “Gotta Get It” and outside of “Feeling Right”, there is not a legitimately interesting song in this set. This is a smart placement for this song because it prepares listeners for one of two albums: an awkward album in which Juvenile tries to do way more than he can, or a boring album in which the production can’t hold up Juvenile rapping about popping bottles and making money. Cocky & Confident opens with a title track that very obviously aspires to approximate Timbaland’s Shock Value style on a tight budget.

As Juvenile unleashes his latest on the public, my main worry after seeing the album art was whether Juvenile was going to attempt to grow as an artist or if his budget would even allow him to.

Tellingly, it didn’t result in any huge singles outside of his region. Instead, he went the strip club route with a large collection of generic bangers. When Reality Check dropped in 2006, Juvenile had been exiled from Cash Money Records and many assumed Juve would have a point to prove.

Juvenile cocky and confident zip