Joe Budden

1	Intro 2:03
2	No. 1 4:04
3	Pump It Up 3:44
4	Pusha Man 4:18
5	U Ain't Gotta Go Home 4:54
6	Walk With Me 5:34
7	She Wanna Know 4:24
8	Survivor 4:32
9	Fire 4:21
10	Ma Ma Ma 4:24
11	Calm Down 5:16
12	Focus 4:02
13	Give Me Reason 3:07
14	Stand Up Nucca 3:18
15	10 Mins. 10:04
16	Real Life in Rap Bonus Track 4:23
17	Porno Star Bonus Track 3:13

Barnes & Noble

From his first moments on the airwaves -- with the rump-shaking club jam "Focus" -- Joe Budden earned the fandom of urban radio enthusiasts with his distinctive voice and comical rap style. After lending his idiosyncratic baritone and lyrical skills to several mix tapes and collaborations, Budden makes his album debut with a disc jam-packed with hip-hop's most essential ingredients: banging beats sprinkled with a little R&B flavor and quotable, tongue-in-cheek rhymes. Released in advance of the album, the club-friendly "Pump It Up" has immediate radio appeal, as does the Ja Rule–esque "She Wanna Know," featuring hip-hop hook-queen Lil' Mo. On the infectious "Fire," featuring the ever-energetic Busta Rhymes, Budden dabbles in house music, but he then takes things down a notch with "Calm Down," a poignant track about his mother and his troubled past. From start to finish, Joe Budden is filled with hot club bangers -- so hip-hop fans best buckle up for an exhilarating ride. LaShieka Purvis

All Music Guide

A well-known veteran of the New York mixtape scene, Joe Budden was no rookie when he recorded his self-titled debut album. The Jersey City rapper had worked the mixtape circuit relentlessly, freestyling over all kinds of beats, everything from Timbaland ("Work It") to the Neptunes ("Grindin'") to the usual East Coast fare. His workmanlike presence earned him quite a reputation, among the leading mixtape DJs like Kayslay and Cutmaster C as well as among the scene itself, and led to his eventual signing by Def Jam, an increasingly conservative label that generally only deals with long-established artists. But all of this fanfare belies the fact that Budden is far from your typical East Coast rap sensation and is actually quite noncommercial. Unlike, for instance, 50 Cent, another rapper who initially made his name on the mixtape scene before debuting in 2003 with much fanfare, Budden doesn't rap about guns, drugs, or violence; furthermore, he's not anyone's protégé, he's not particularly fashionable, and he's not into beefing. Yet while he's not gangsta, he's nowhere near backpack either. He raps about himself and is good-natured and often humorous, and he raps in a fluctuating, conversational flow over beats by an unknown producer who bills himself as White Boy. In sum, Budden is one of those very few major-label rappers who is truly an anomaly, and that itself makes him noteworthy. His 75-minute debut album is wonderfully all-encompassing: there are a pair of radio-ready Just Blaze productions ("Pump It Up," "Fire"), a pair of urban-crossover duets ("She Wanna Know," "Ma Ma Ma"), a couple deep tracks that showcase his heart ("Walk With Me," "Stand Up Nucca," "10 Mins."), a BDP-sampling ode to the old school ("#1"), a roof-raising club-banger ("Focus"), and more. Budden's debut isn't quite an instant classic, as he's still better at freestyling verses that crafting hooks, and the album could use a couple more non-White Boy productions, if only for the sake of variety, but it's nonetheless promising, an omen of a greater things to come, for Budden as well as for listeners. [The standard edition includes two bonus tracks, "Real Life in Rap" and "Porno Star," that are rather profane and thus excluded from the clean edition.] Jason Birchmeier

Blender

At his best, he's a throwback to the days when MCs were neighborhood truth tellers, not blinged-out heads of multinational corporations. Alan Light