The man who brought the world Hobo Junction, the Left Coast's indie response to the Wu-Tang Clan, drops his third album, The Hit List. Since his first solo album, The Boxcar Session, Saafir's been busy. Between teaming up with Ras Kass and Xzibit (who'll headline the Lyricist Lounge show in Boston on the 18th) to form the Golden State Warriors crew and recording Trigonometry, his second album, under the pseudonym Mr. No-No, one wonders where the Saucee Nomad has had time to come up with the tight lyrical flow and musicality a worthy hip-hop album necessitates. The short answer: He didn't. The Oaktown native's third effort is flat and largely uninspired, quite the disappointment after his much lauded freestyle battle with Casual.

Fact of the matter is that Saafir's career was much more gripping the first time it was done...by Tupac. Both rappers came up in Oakland and blew up after short stints with Digital Underground. Both saw time on the big screen (for Saafir, Menace II Society), but Tupac was Tupac and Saafir is, well, not much relatively speaking. The Hit List, while featuring a few tracks worthy of transitional status on the turntable (most notably the head-nodding "Runnin' Man" and the opening monologue to the title track), is still light years behind the seminal 2pacalypse Now and doesn't even approach the pyrotechnics of his own earlier efforts. C+