It wouldn’t be false to say that Ice Cube’s last release, I Am the West, left more than just a bitter after taste in listeners’ and West Coast Hip-Hop fans’ mouths. It was a listless final product—coupled with whatever Snoop’s been doing recently—that affirms the opinion that the Left Coast’s elder statesmen have grown senile in their older, wiser years. Thus, balking at the thought of a new WC album wouldn’t be unreasonable. However, the former Westside Connection member’s latest LP, Return of the Barracuda, stomps out the idea that all of these veteran MCs have lost their swagger. For Barracuda, WC compiles a fourteen-track power trip that reasserts the fact that the biggest, baddest South Central representers can still hold down a microphone.

Within seconds of the Barracuda’s introduction, WC announces that all he wants his some “gangster shit,” and, boy, does he deliver on that desire. The album’s first three tracks leave a waffle gum sole firmly planted on the listener’s neck as each track continually ups the ante with rough-and-tumble bass and West Coast synth. “You Know Me,” features a boisterous Maylay appearance and, surprisingly, reinvigorated Cube whose verse finally breaches an acceptable level of competency. However, it’s WC who steals the show as he holds a loud speaker to the mic, proclaiming, “bad bitch on my side, ass like Alicia Keys/feel the breeze, don’t retire Nicky, please/on the 110 with my Dickies to my knees.” Dub C brings a motley crew in Tha Dogg Pound, Bad Lucc and Soopafly to assist him on the tumbling, East Coast-esque beat of “Sticking to the Script,” while “Hustla” sees WC spit over Djay Cas & Yung Fokus’ sinuous synthesizer and blown-up bass.

However, East Coast Hip-Hop flag-wavers should take note that Barracuda—aside from the aforementioned “Stick to the Script”—is another practice in the West Coast’s modernistic post-G-Funk era. The album is formulaic; however, it’s formulaic in it stays true to its Los Angelino roots and doesn’t compromise its core values of Dickies khakis, Chuck Taylors and post-mortem Eazy E acknowledgments. The lyricism isn’t groundbreaking, but it works very well within the framework of Barracuda’s powerful thumps and beats.

Dub’s latest isn’t primed to one-up The Chronic nor Doggystyle, but really, there will never be another West Coast album that matches those two (or three if one considers 2001) albums’ breathtaking legacies. Revenge…, though, is a competent LP that commands attention throughout and will make one break out that vintage Raiders snapback—or New Era Dodgers fitted—to wear with pride.