"I Got That Fire." "Back That Thing Up." "Ha." "From Her Mama." I'm going to hate on Juvenile a bit here but know that it comes from love.

This is a young man who made some of my favorite rap songs of the last couple years— not best, mind you, but the ones I couldn't help but turn up whenever I heard them, often against my better judgement.

Rap music has been in an undeniable decline for the last five years or so (a problem for which Juvenile is hardly innocent), but every once in a while, a song so dumb, yet so catchy, comes along to reaffirm whatever faith a dude like myself has in hiphop.

Like Coolio before him, Juvenile was the man for that job for quite a while. But, with the release of Juve the Great, the throne has emptied.

Juvenile used to be able to marry the dumb and the undeniable. Now, he's just undeniably dumb. Maybe this will illustrate what's wrong with Juve the Great. I played with a drum machine for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and within five minutes of randomly pressing buttons, I'd already come up with beats more original than producer Mannie Fresh's. The genius of the Cash Money label has always been its ability to turn $10 of production into $10 million in sales, but the tracks on Juve the Great are the same boring click-clack Mannie's been cranking out since the beginning.

And the once-mighty Juvenile doesn't help much. We get it; your ego is gigantic. We get it; you're stupendously rich. We get it; you're a thug. Wait.

Attention rappers: You cannot be rich and be a thug at the same time. They're contradictory thoughts. If Juvenile is trying to establish street credibility by throwing in an "I'm so tough" track every twenty minutes, he's only making things worse.

Talk about how you're in court for neglecting child support if you want! At least that's something. And stop claiming that rapper Baby took you for a bunch of money back in your Hot Boyz days. He's on your album. Twice. It just doesn't add up, and it reduces Juve the Great to a huge put-on. Which I guess it is.

Juve the Great isn't a total disaster; "It Ain't Mines" (it's like "Billie Jean," only terrible!) and "Numb Numb," at least, actually had me laughing out loud, and since Juvenile's mumble and Mannie Fresh's beats are so unobtrusive, it's pretty easy to forget it's even playing after a while. I'm impressed enough by how ingenious these guys are to be able to make so much money with so little talent.

As repetitive as these tracks are, they never cross over into the realm of annoyance. But it's not something you're ever going to want to listen to.

I realize it's foolish of me to be looking at Juvenile from any kind of academic perspective; this is music designed to be played loudly in a Jeep, and as a collection of pure sound, there's almost certainly something worse than Juve the Great. But as the kind of rap music you play at any volume under 11, this disc is miserable. If you already have a Juvenile CD, you don't need this one. And if you don't, well, wait for the greatest hits.