Music releases: Shwayze

SHWAYZE

Geffen Records

When Malibu MC Adam Smith — known to MTV viewers as Shwayze — hooked up with “producer” Cisco Adler, it was a hazy, lazy match made in beach bum heaven.

Adler’s been kicking around fantastic L.A. as his father’s son (producer Lou Adler) a grunge-glam rocker and a boy-toy to Paris/Mischa/etc. forever. Somebody had to give Cisco something solid to do. That’d be Shwayze, the self-described “only black kid in Malibu.” The rapper has a sleepier, more laconic flow than a narcoleptic G. Love in a hammock and lyrics that concern themselves with weed, women, more weed, Hollywood, cars and once again, weed.

So Adler’s crooning woozily alongside the chilled-out MC and producing sunshine strummed beat-boxed songs like “Roamin’” that come off like a third-rate Sugar Ray. Yet, despite their limited vocabulary — lines like “if you got the weed, I got the pipe, we can get high together all night” are Dostoyevsky to these guys — their debut album is contagious as all-get-out in a languidly wonky fashion.

As long as you don’t lose too many brain cells from the dumbo lyrical likes of “Corona and Lime,” you’ll be OK.

— A.D. Amorosi,

The Philadelphia Inquirer