E-40 Doesn't Deliver The Exciting Return Fans Hoped For On 'Rule Of Thumb: Rule 1'

Earl Stephens, professionally known as E-40, is one of the most unique and inventive rappers in the genre’s history.

A Bay area legend, his off-kilter flow and ludicrous, language-bending vocabulary are often imitated but never successfully duplicated despite numerous attempts. His continued authenticity and charm have awarded him true longevity, with the singularity of his style allowing him to adapt to the sounds and conventions of any era. With his latest release, we learn that while his singularity is his greatest strength, it’s also starting to be a hindrance, as 26 albums in, a lot of these songs are starting to feel like reruns.

With Rule of Thumb: Rule 1, E-40 delivers a bloated, feature-heavy affair that, while not terrible, or even subpar, has a hard time justifying its existence beyond serving E-40’s most hardcore fans.

While the four-year gap that followed his last album, 2019’s Practice Makes Paper, was necessary given the onslaught of output he delivered in the 2010s, this return, unfortunately, highlights that 40 doesn’t have much to say beyond what we have already heard, despite his still sharp skills.

Just over an hour long, the 23-song affair suffers from a bloated tracklist and an incredibly mixed bag in the instrumental department. Most of the beats try to emulate the Hyphy sound that 40 helped to popularize but rarely do anything beyond offering formulaic, surface-level imitations of the subgenre. The worst offenders are far and away “Bay Warren Buffett,” and “Billionaire Dreams,” which are both so uninventive and derivative that they’d have felt stale 15 years ago. These feel like they’ve just clocked the BPM of mid-2000s E-40 classics like “Yay Area” and matched it, using the same bassy 808s to capture that feel, while simultaneously stripping the sound of its charm with just how empty they feel.

But the worst moment on the record is “Pressure”. The track strays away from the Hyphy sound and opts for a mess of clashing percussion and a hook that has Bossko repeatedly just saying the word “pressure” into a vocoder. It’s the biggest stylistic outlier on the album, which should be a breath of fresh air, but the jarring instrumental is so distractingly irritating that it takes away from 40’s contributions to the track.

A handful of other highlights occur in moments where the features prevent 40 from having to do all of the heavy lifting. Tracks like the Larry June & Clyde Carson-assisted “GPS” and “Lemme Go” with long-time collaborator Too $hort and Mista F.A.B. both serve as major highlights. “GPS” houses one of the album’s best hooks, courtesy of Clyde Carson, and finds its strength in the contrast between 40’s bouncy, sporadic flow and Larry June’s laid-back, conversational delivery. On the other hand, “Lemme GO” is a reunion of the big three of the Hyphy movement, feeling like a celebration of their respective careers and legacies.

“Off Dat Mob” is one of 40’s more intriguing performances across the record. The hook has him fluctuating between a bassy growl and a light, higher-pitched inflection, breaking up a pair of verses that feature his cleanest and most impressive delivery of the album. Not only is his flow as buttery smooth as it gets for 40, but he finds himself in a pocket that almost feels like an extra layer of percussion, with each syllable keeping pace with the recurring bass hits. It is the closest he gets to rapping more conventionally, though he executes it in a manner that still feels organic and true to his style.

It’s a shame that a lack of quality control holds Rule of Thumb: Rule 1 back from being as good as it could have been. Several tracks sound like throwaways that didn’t need to be here. He’s still dropping jewels, exuding that same exuberant swagger and rapping his ass off, but more of the same is not enough to justify the sheer volume of songs here, nor the instrumental misses that plague a good chunk of the project.

It’s unfortunate that after a relatively lengthy hiatus, Rule of Thumb: Rule 1 feels so inconsequential as a record, but at the very least it’s solid enough to refrain from being a blemish on E-40’s legacy.