MC Ren is not about getting jiggy with it.

There's nothing on Ruthless For Life, his fourth album, that uses a familiar disco sample to flavor tales of pursuing money and women while wearing designer clothes and expensive jewelry.

He doesn't mention anything about his favorite brand of champagne and he probably doesn't, as he says on his song "CPT All Day" (RealAudio excerpt), care at all about so-called players and player-haters.

What he does care about is the large number of rappers who have twisted the gangsta-rap genre, which he had a hand in developing as a member of the group N.W.A, into an upwardly mobile scene dominated by artists concerned with wine, women and club-friendly songs. As MC Ren sees it, no one has adequately addressed this circumstance. So he elected to devote much of the 12 tracks on Ruthless For Life to rhymes about his gritty Compton, Calif.