Crunk: Accept no substitutes.

I walked into Best Buy Monday in desperate need of something to review.

I ended up walking out with Ying Yang Twins' My Brother and Me, a remix album/companion piece to last year's Me and My Brother.

For the record, I don't support corporate America, but come on, it was $5.99.

I like the Ying Yang Twins (and, consequently, almost all other so-called "crunk" rap, but particularly Ying Yang) because the group has found a way to distill rapping down to the repetition of about 10 or so clipped phrases.

This includes sporadic growling and unabashed raunch over clanging, Ennio Morricone-influenced beats and tuneless synth.

The formula is intoxicating and hypnotic, the effect at any volume not unlike pushing your head against a speaker at a club.

I don't even really think of it as rap; it's dance music, meant to be blasted in loud, dark places while people get crunk.

And if you don't know what that is by now, I'm not going to explain it to you.

My Brother and Me has some great songs on it: "Get Crunk Shorty," appropriately enough, is my current favorite, and there are two remixes of the superb "Salt Shaker."

But the beauty of crunk is that it really doesn't matter what you're listening to from one song to the next. If I want to hear some crunk, I can put on My Brother and Me and have that need satisfied since virtually all crunk elicits the same response: crunkness.

Sometimes, nothing other than that piercing keyboard noise and D-Roc and Kaine (as the Twins are known individually, or Lil' Scrappy, or any of the others) will do.

If you're a crunk addict like myself, My Brother and Me is instant gratification, and that's all I need in an album.

-- By Paul Thompson