Flo'Ology

It’d be easy to trash Floetry as hip-hop for the Oprah crowd. The rhymes on their second album are full of you-go-girl-isms, the silky production is inoffensive above all else, and the cooing choruses frequently threaten to turn the whole affair into smooth sonic wallpaper. But they rarely do. The rhymes on “Blessed 2 Have” have a refreshingly grimy edge, while Common helps punch up the P.M. Dawn–ish “SupaStar.” Some of the “poetry” is downright pretentious, but thugs in need of a hot bubble bath after a long day of keeping it real could do worse than reach for Flo’Ology to keep them company.