Another American attempt to cash in on big-beat hovers into view. However, Mr. Fresh has at least imported some pure breakbeats and had them implanted with the aid of The Freestylers, Grandmaster Flash and Fat Boy Slim. The difference with "The Last True Family Man" is that Fresh has been knocking about a good deal longer than most of the upstarts now holding his hand while he crosses the road and it shows.

Ignore the cliched plane-landing and take-off that bookends the album and look inside for the genuine material. Feel the quality of 'Smokin' Gun', which takes the Fatboy formula and fleshes it out with layer upon splattered layer of diamond samples. Under Fresh's guidance big-beat drags its surf board down to the beach to catch the breaks, or lounges one arms out of the car window like a Latino pimp looking over his shades. Tarantino would quite possibly resell his soul for some of the tracks on here.

Fresh is indiscriminate about which styles he rips off, which, while producing the occasional dud like 'La Lyrica', moments later he shimmies across the floor wearing huge disco sideboards or goes Mambo on 'OK Baby'. However, while Fresh's interpretation is relatively original, it takes on a golden hue in contact with Norman Cook. 'Badder Badder Schwing' shifts up a gear, and, in its way, outclasses much of the material on "You've Come a Long Way Baby". By the time the plane roars away you wonder if even that isn't meant to be a piss-take.