Will you wanna snuggle? Probably.

First and foremost, let’s get any discussion of this album’s artwork out of the way. Sure, it’s kind of ugly, but let’s not judge an album by its cover. Wanna Snuggle is the kind of album that just deserves more than some snarky remarks about its cover. For the most part, this is one hell of a record, as half of its tracks are some of the best you will probably hear this year. Of course, that depends on your taste—meaning if you have a penchant for more superficial hip-hop, you should probably move along. Truthfully, anyone interested remotely in hip-hop needs to hear at least some of Wanna Snuggle?.

Apathy hails from the underdog hip-hop state of Connecticut and is a rapper and producer who has built a healthy following for a damn good reason: He’s a talented artist. Armed with a great flow full of clever wordplay and equally strong abilities behind the boards, Apathy offers Wanna Snuggle?, a showcase for said skills in spades. Perfect examples include “Money Orientated” and “True Love”, two of 2009’s best tracks. The former features a slick loop of AZ’s famous verse on Nas’ “Life’s a Bitch” and a fresh look at the evils of money, and the latter pairs up Renaissance man Phonte with Apathy for a cut full of old-school vibes and loads of quotables. Other hits include eerie joints “Victim” and “Slave” along with the oddly fun “Shoot First”, which hosts a great guest verse from B-Real.

But the pacing of this record is extremely detrimental to its success. You more or less have a mixture of fantastic and dreadful songs with nothing in between. What’s frustrating about this is Apathy made this album unreasonably long at 21 tracks that clock in at nearly 70 minutes. Take the editor’s scissors to the tracklist, get rid of seven to eight tracks (like “Mind Ya Business”, “Anyday”, and “Run, Run Away”), and you would have what is close to a perfect album.

• Multiple songs MySpace