Album Review: Benny Blue – The Meaux Project

the title of this photo is: "chop steak was struggling to find a relevant photo"

I did a guest review for my homie, The Honest Ape.  Benny Blue, one of the Steel Town Sounds’ producers, released this remix compilation.  Peep the review, and give me some feedback on Medium, here, both places, or via singing telegram.  The point is, I’m flexible.  Enjoy.

Album Review: Random | Megaran 9

8 bits and 16 bars.  That’s the theme for the new release by Phoenix emcee, Random.  This album borrows both samples and thematic content from the Mega Man video game franchise, that has been around since I was blowing dust off the contacts on my original NES cartridges.

The album is produced by an ensemble of talented beatmakers, but all stick to the basic script of taking 8-bit synthesizer loops from the game soundtrack and adding drums and other instrumentation.  If this sounds like it could get monotonous, it could.  The number of different producers with different approaches to the same formula keeps this from happening, though.  Grooves tend to sound mechanical and cold, apropriate for Mega Man’s robotic post-apocalypse.

On the mic, Random follows a formula most of the time as well, speaking on various aspects of the game and it’s storyline.  He takes some interesting angles, like personifying boss character, Splash Woman:

She told me about her true purpose
Used to save victims that fell through the surface
A few days ago the contract expired
And she was scheduled to be thrown into the fire
And Wiley gave her a reason to live
So now she gotta do what he says
Shed a tear and said you don’t understand
I gotta stick to the plan, I owe everything to this man

He keeps this approach for a lot of the album, and although not everything is explicitly about the game, he uses a lot of language tied to it to form other metaphors (e.g. I wasn’t programmed with love in my heart).  He is an impressive emcee that manages to keep this idea fresh through the whole album.

Speaking as someone who hasn’t seriously fooled with video games in years, I enjoy this album.  It is an interesting concept, and Random and his producers pull it off well.  Definitely worth a spin for even casual fans.  It is currently available for free download almost in its entirety.  The whole thing drops on CD and digital download March 20.

Megaran – Splash Woman

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Album Review: Mic Skills | Defiant

Self-Released, 2009

[Note: Mic Skills is definitely part of my fam, and this album is littered with appearances from rappers and producers I run with, so objectivity be damned.  That said, I'm way too much of an asshole not to speak my mind, and I wouldn't give this a cosign if I didn't truly think it was tight.]

Houston rapper, and the force behind weekly hip hop showcase Mission Control, Mic Skills has finally put out his self-released debut.  Combining several different production styles and flows, the album is a collage of sounds headed up by a gifted emcee.

The album starts with three anthemic southern bangers, with double-time flows and plenty of swagger to set the stage.  From there, things get a little move varied.  Criminal is a somewhat faster, moody track that examines various viewpoints on criminality.  From there, it is a grab bag of styles and moods, from bad-ass bangers like Sick to more reflective material like the self-explanatory Autobiography.  Mic Skills’ name is pretty self-explanatory too, as he is a gifted and versatile rapper.  Even the De La Soul’esque disco jam, Roller Rink, is pulled off very naturally.  Guest emcees are all over this album, mostly coming from around Texas.  They never take shine from Mic Skills, but there are a lot of great moments.  Hero rips his verse on Sick and Ezekiel38 is nice on the laid back party track, Pure Inebriation.

For an album with so many styles of beats, this hangs together surprisingly well.  The instrumentals were mostly provided by Digi and Vango One.  Some standouts by these two include Digi’s electro-influenced bounce on Kill This Hype and Criminal, a brooding four-on-the-floor stomp by Vango One, with strings that sounded like they came out of a soap opera segue.  Alpha 2020 dropped some mellow soul for 2 Stories and Hi Stakez’ Cirque Du Soleil was a nice soulful Houston blues.  One of the best beats on the album was done by Riz, Ultimate Weapon.  It has hard-hitting drums and darkly hype strings and pianos.

Overall, there is a lot to like about this album.  It was obviously crafted painstakingly, behind the boards and in the vocal booth.  Fans of underground hip hop should definitely give this a spin, no matter what your flavor.  You’re bound to find something you like.

The album is available on CD Baby and digitally on Itunes, Rhapsody, and Amazon.  Also, check out Mic Skills on Myspace.

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Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 3

Without further ado, I present the end of my countdown of the top 10 albums.  The best rap album of 2008:

young jeezy | the recession

def jam

If I had to sum up last year in one word, there’s a pretty good chance it would be “Recession.”  From rising unemployment to rising gas prices, America took one hell of a psychological beating.  People lost houses, fortunes, and in many cases, a healthy store of pride they had built up over the last decade.  Fortunately, we don’t appear to be headed for complete depression (economic or clinical), but one only had to check his/her diminished holiday party calendar or think wistfully back to last year’s Christmas bonus to see that, in the words of one Christopher Wallace, shit done changed.

Enter: the self-declared motivational speaker of Atlanta’s burgeoning musical scene of the 2000′s.  As of 2006, Jeezy appeared to have nailed down a formula that would allow him to string together a series of hit albums for as long as he wanted to: An extremely well-chosen selection of beats, effective, if elementary, rhymes that could make even the laziest couch potato want to get his grind on, and signature ad-libs as notable as any of his raps.  This pushed his major label debut, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 to platinum status, and its follow up, The Inspiration, to number one on the billboard album charts.  The obvious path for his third Def Jam record would be to stick to the script, and joyfully trap his way to victory once again.  Joyful isn’t the way to describe the prevailing mood these days, and Jeezy clearly has a little more weighing on his mind this time around.

From the beginning of the intro, he lays down his mission statement: to give everybody hope.  Granted, his definition of “hope” is a little different from that of some people, and his drug trafficking imagery is not exactly the politically correct type of hope that presidential candidates tried to latch onto this year.  It is clear, though, that for once, he acknowledges that there are problems that are too big for one person to squash on their own, no matter how hard they try.  “Trap got a nigga drunk/Still tryin’ to Sober up/Wish I had me some money, I’d buy me some better luck/Might by me some more time/Ain’t nobody got it, need to find me a new gri-grind,” Jeezy bellows.  If this sounds a little different from the self-empowerment script on his first two albums, it is.

A welcome change on this album is an improvement in Young Jeezy’s overall lyricism.  Big Pun, he’s not, and never will be.  He will never blow anyone away with overstuffed bars and complex rhyme schemes full of thought-provoking metaphors.  His flow is very straight ahead, and relies on repitition, or near repetition of syllables to rhyme.  The simplicity is deceptive though, in that lines that often sound repetitive have subtly different meanings, and require careful listening to actually follow his train of thought.  He has also stepped up his one-liner game a bit, and his lines are a little snappier than last time around: “I took a Gatorade break to get everything straight/Now I’m sittin’ here like ‘How much Gatorade make?’” He’s still clearly in grind mode for a lot of the album, but he’s got a little more range in his reflections on the hustle than he ever has.  There are only three guest rappers on the album (if you count Kanye’s autotune croon as rapping), but Jeezy has more than enough to say to hold it down largely solo.  In fact, his two verses on the album closer My President are both better than the Nas 16 at the end of it (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write).  Rapping aside, no Young Jeezy album is complete without some dramatic production, though, and this one doesn’t disappoint in that regard either.

Continuing his streak of having a golden ear for beats, Jeezy has put out the best-produced album of both his career, and this year in rap.  With an ensemble cast of names like DJ Toomp, Don Cannon, and Drumma Boy, this album bangs start to finish.  Not only is there not one poor beat on the album, there’s not even an average one.  Jeezy doesn’t do low octane, and the album is one dark, dramatic orchestration after another.  Putting together a suite of beats like that, but keeping the album from turning into one big indistinct mass of 808′s and strings is an accomplishement.  Each beat is unique, though, and keeps the energy level peaking from start to finish.  Don Cannon’s re-working of Let the Dollars Circulate by Billy Paul on Circulate is probably the greatest single moment on the album.  Midnight puts up a pair of synthesizer masterpieces on Crazy World and What They Want as well.  The production matches the overall mood of the album as Jeezy tries to negotiate the line between his dope man boasts and his moments of uncertainty.  That dilemma is what defines this album, and life in the late 2000′s as well.

For the first time in his career, Jeezy admits that he doesn’t have all the answers; it’s not as simple as building a better future, one cocaine brick at a time.  Still, he is not content to sit back and let the economic downturn wash him away.  He will still show you how to make a mil right now and knows that the dollars won’t stop circulating just because he isn’t in the mix.  Jeezy’s raps aren’t exactly great life advice if taken literally, but the spirit in which he delivers them is emblematic of the times: confusion and concern, but still looking defiantly ahead to brighter days.  For capturing so perfectly and this moment in time, Young Jeezy has the best album of 2008.

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Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 2

Let us proceed…

5. scarface | emeritus

rap-a-lot

All good things, it seems, must come to an end.  So it is with the arguable father of Houston hip hop, Brad Jordan, b.k.a. Scarface.  According to him, this is the last solo album the Def Jam South A&R will make.  One might expect a sentimental retrospective, a la Jay-Z’s faux swan song, The Black Album.  Uncle Face, one of hip hop’s least well-behaved emcee’s hasn’t built a career off of doing what one might expect, however.  This album is simply business as usual: hardcore street poetry that is at once wisened and world-weary, and devilishly ignorant.  It is certainly a standout in his deep catalog.

After an extra-long J. Prince intro, the album opens with a no holds barred shot at haters in general, and Lil’ Troy in particular.  Apparentlyh some accusations of snitching have been flying back and forth between the two camps in the last year.  With that out of the way, the ablum settles into a nice soulful groove.  Topics range from politics to somber portrayals of life in the hood to aggressive threats.  Face hasn’t lost any of his flow or his edge as his career has progressed, and whether he’s giving fatherly advice or describing how he’ll blow somebody’s head off, it’s hard not to pay attention:  “When it come time for me to pay the piper/fuck it, I been tryin’ to meet death/So please believe that when it’s time to show/I’ll be ready with my arms crossed, dyin’ to go.” There aren’t many guests on the album, but Face stands up to them all, including top form verses from Bun B and Lil’ Wayne on Forgot About Me.

Beats on the album are handled by an ensemble cast, that surprisingly doesn’t include Face himself.  Scarface laced a couple of nice tracks on UGK’s last album, and has been speaking in interviews about developing his production skills lately.  The beats are a good mixture of slow bluesy bangers and high octane joints.  Most of them include soul sampling of some sort, but a few are synth only.  Jake One’s honey-dripping background for the sex track High Note is the clear favorite on the album.  Anthony Gilmour’s reflective, densely layered Soldier Story is one of the stronger tracks as well, and both Illmind and Nottz make nice contributions too.

Despite taking not one second to look back or reflect on the end of a long and influential career, Scarface made a fitting end to his discography with this one.  It is an uncompromising, well-crafted album that shows a level of perspective that can only come from years of experience in the game and life in general.  Hopefully Face will continue to shape the game for years to come.

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04. black milk | tronic

fat beats

Black Milk has enjoyed a relatively quick ascendance to the top of the Detroit rap scene.  The talented producer first gained notice producing on Slum Village’s Trinity LP, and hasn’t looked back since.  Definitely a devotee of Dilla, it has been hard for BM to move out of his giant shadow, over the years, however.  This album may be the first time he unequivocally does that, and establishes himself as a unique and highly talented beatsmith.  But as the infomercial saying goes, wait, there’s more!  He is also a talented rapper, and this album showcases both of those aspects of his double threat very well.

Tronic’s sound breaks with his usual, soul-drenched warmth, creating a landscape that is often cold and mechanical, but still funky.  This makes the overall album sound like a jam in outer space, and really pushes it above a lot of it’s contemporaries in the beat department.  Starting off with the thunderous anthem, Long Story Short, the album rocks with synthesized strings and even some live brass courtesy of a man better known for his abilities as a crooner, Dwele.  From there, there is the reverb’ed out offbeat jazz of Give The Drummer Some and the assembly line four-on-the-floor syncopation of Hold It Down.  One of the few unequivocally soulful tracks on the album, Try, is another favorite.  Several tracks are instrumental-only.  They are all well-produced, but the album probably could’ve done with a few more vocal tracks in it’s relatively compact 55 minutes.

Black Milk has a nice flow, clearly influenced by contemporaries like Elzhi.  His lyrics won’t blow anyone away, but he is decent on the mic.  The album largely stays in bragging territory, and does not really stray too far into social commentary, but he does switch it up every now and again.  Without U is a playful story track about a failed relationship and Long Story Short more or less lays out his curriculum vitae as a producer.  There are very few guests, but raps by Pharoahe Monch and Sean Price, and scratches from DJ Premier definitely make Matrix an awesome collab track.

Beats definitely make this album.  It is one of the best and most originally produced works of the year, and it foretells a lot of good things to come for the D in the future.  Hopefully he is able tofind some vocal talent to match his production work.

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03. bun b | ii trill

rap-a-lot

Often, an album must be evaluated in the context in which it was created and released.  For example, the significance of Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death is very much altered by the artist’s own violent death within weeks of the album’s release date.  Similarly, this album is partially defined by a death: that of Chad “Pimp C” Butler, Bun’s UGK partner.  Based on the May release of the album, shortly after Butler’s December passing, one would assume that the album was largely complete when he died.  Thus, it would’ve been a follow up to their summer 2007 success with the Underground Kingz double album, and a statement of things to come for the Port Arthur, TX group.  It certainly forecasts things to come, but now in a different way, as circumstance has turned Bun B into a solo artist.  Fortunately, he is one of the most talented and well-connected voices in hip hop, and this album showcases that.

Like it’s 2006 predecessor, Trill, this album has beats that are overall more synthesizer-based than the bluesier, sampled sound of UGK albums.  With a varied, but always obviously Houston sound, this is one of the best albums of the year from a production standpoint.  J.R. Rotem, still not a household name, but one of the best producers, makes the obvious winner with the lead single That’s Gangsta.  There are a lot of other notables too.  Jazze Phizzle dropped another banger for My Block with synthesized brass and kettle drums.  Enigma’s Swing On ‘Em has a nasty bounce to it and probably the best hook on the whole album.  The one real misstep was remaking the Cash Money classic Back Dat Azz Up as Pop It For Pimp.  A Juvenile feature, I suppose the idea was to update the track, but overall, everything about it fell completely flat.  Some things are best left as they are.

Despite never being mentioned when the question comes up, Bun B may be the best rapper period in 2008, and if not, he’s close.  This album takes a smart look at life’s ups and downs, and adds something to the dialog of poverty and drugs in the black community without coming across as preachy.  Speaking on gentrification in the hood: “They say that one rotten apple can spoil the whole bunch/But we talkin’ ’bout some people, not apples, this ain’t lunch…You say development is good for the hood, yeah that’s what you sellin’ us/But you on the payroll of the builders and developers.”Bun is sharp and has a lot to say about the ills that have plagued those he’s close to, but he finds time for a little southern swagger as well.  Guests are numerous on the album, and there are a few standout verses.  G-Unit refugee, Young Buck, lit up his verse on If I Die II Nite and You’re Everything was an excellent southern posse cut with Ricky Ross, David Banner, and 8ball & MJG.  Angel In The Sky is the mandatory “RIP Pimp C” cut on the album, and while it is hard for even Bun to express everything he had to be feeling about the situation, it is a fitting sendoff track to a friend and a legend.

This is the best album to come out of the Houston scene this year.  It mixes smart street-level commentary and a cast of producers that fit Bun’s level of talent.  Sadly, the bluesy sound of Pimp’s production passed with him, and there will never be anything that sounds like a UGK album again.  Fortunately, Bun shows that there is much to look forward to still, and that he will continue to carry the torch for the underground, no matter how big he gets.

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02. lil’ wayne – tha carter iii

Say what you will about Lil‘ Wayne, but he can’t be accused of being lazy.  Between guest appearances and mixtapes, the body of work he’s released since his last studio album, 2005′s Tha Carter II, contains more songs than some rappers put out in their entire careers.  Inevitably, some of those verses sound mailed in, but amazingly, most of it has been very high quality music.  Those tracks, combined with the consistent track record of solo releases stretching back nearly a decade, add up to the most anticipated hip hop album of the year.  Fortunately, Wayne delivers on the promise.

Weezy continues to claim the oft-contested title of “best rapper alive,” and while it’s hard to award him that title for sure, he is a monster in the vocal booth.  From the intro, 3peat, to his verses on the ending Dontgetit, he shows continued development and versatility.  The album features several good concept tracks, including Comfortable, which returns fire at Beyonce’s Irreplaceable, and Dr. Carter, in which Weezy plays doctor to hip hop.  A lot of the album is straight swagger and polish though, and short of possibly Jay-Z, Wayne is unequaled in that area.  From Playing With Fire: “Osh Kosh B’gosh, Posh Spice’s husband couldn’t kick it like I kick it.” One-liners abound, but the Robin Thicke feature, Tie My Hands, shows that Wayne is good for more than punchlines.  Picking up where the title track to his Suffix mixtape left off, Tie My Hands lovingly examines his home town of New Orleans in the post-Katrina era.  Guest spots are relatively few, and the vast majority are assets.  Nothing, even Fabolous’ sustained metaphors on You Ain’t Got Nuthin’, outshine Wayne‘s lines, though.  One interesting singing feature was 70′s R&B matron, Betty Wright, probably most famous for her single, Tonight Is The Night.  Wright lends her toughened vocals to Playing With Fire.  It adds to the song’s heavy atmosphere, which, like everything else on the album, is very well-produced.

A far cry from the Mannie Fresh-orchestrated sound of Cash Money albums in the past, Wayne has managed to put together a varied suite of beats.  Long time Lil‘ Wayne fans are sure to miss Fresh’s tom rolls and rich melodies, but it’s hard to be mad at this production.  Bangladesh laces the stutter-stepping A Milli, and Alchemist’s You Ain’t Got Nuthin’ is a grimy clavinet masterpiece.  Dr. Carter is a surprise, an unusually jazzy beat from Swizz Beatz.  Lollipop, the lead single, by Jim Jonsin, is a stripper anthem of the highest order.  Kanye West also drops a few beats, the best probably being the simplest, Let The Beat Build.  It is a vocal loop with various drum beats dropping in and out through the sprawling five-minute track.  It takes Kanye’s simplistic formula to it’s logical extreme, but it works perfectly.  There is not one bad beat on the album, and a few great ones.

Overall, this is a creative success for Wayne.  A few nagging problems exist though: Lil‘ Wayne‘s voice is changing.  Some of this comes from use, no doubt, as he is over a decade in the rap game.  Some of it though, is on purpose, and has a modern-era Ghostface nearly-crying sound to it.  There is a slight lack of cohesiveness on the album too.  From an artist who has put out several mixtapes in the last two years, this album almost sounds like another mixtape, with nothing tying all the tracks together.  A couple creative decisions are puzzling as well, like the eight-minute stoned ramble at the end of Dontgetit.  These are all minor flaws on a very good project though, and hopefully Lil‘ Wayne‘s output doesn’t slow down in the coming years.

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That’s it for this round.  My number one pick and some other great records to check for coming in a couple days!

Keep those comments coming.  I love to hear what y’all think.

Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 1

If I had to give 2008 a title as it relates to hip hop, it would be “Year of the Autotune.”  Granted, autotune has never gone away from pop music, but it is normally used as a subtle pitch corrector, to make a singer’s imperfect vocals perfectly in tune. Last year saw T-Pain’s 2007 experiments with Roger Troutman’s signature warbling use of the effect spread like wildfire, however.  From Weezy to Yeezy, and from Doggy Dogg to Diddy, everybody seemed to want it in their effect chain.

I don’t hate on the effect itself, and it has produced some songs that I really loved this year.  However, like any over-inflated band wagon in hip hop, too much of anything has bad results.  Hopefully, ’09 will see a bit more diversity, and the talkbox (or it’s software equivalent) in the hands of those who really know what they’re doing with it.

With that in mind, I present the first of my three-part series recapping my favorite rap albums of ’08.

10. madlib | WLIB AM: king of the wigflip

stone’s throw

It’s hard to deny the offbeat genius of Oxnard, CA native, Madlib.  Between his solo albums as Yesterday’s New Quintet and Quasimoto, his classic collab with Jay Dilla, and his work on other people’s albums, he has earned his place as the rightful standard bearer for Stone’s Throw Records.  This is the final installment of the classic “Beat Generation” series of albums, which have showcased the eclectic stylings of underground mainstays like King Britt and DJ Spinna over the past decade or so.  Madlib’s contribution the series is fittingly and wonderfully random, as are most of his projects.

WLIB is a mix album strung together from beats that drift in and out of the frame like a hazy musical stream of consciousness.  Plenty of record dust and Madlib’s usual low-fi mix are the only consistent styles, as the album lurches back and forth between sugary soul samples and cold mechanical echoes.  It all hangs together somehow, though, spliced with various found recordings that lend a subtle shade of comedy to the whole thing.

There are several guest rappers/spoken word poets on here, most coming from the usual Stone’s Throw stable and their close affiliates.  There are a few quality performances here, notably from Guilty Simpson on Blow The Horns On ‘Em, and Cali underground rapper Defari on Gamble On Ya Boy.  Like most Stone’s Throw productions, however, this album suffers from a lack of cleverness and execution by the rappers.  In some ways, it fits the hazy atmospherics, but in others, it just gets monotonous.  It is a more or less constant achilles hill for this album, and makes it simply a very good record, instead of a great one.

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9. heltah skeltah | d.i.r.t.: da incredible rap team

duck down/koch

[Review edited from my original review of this album, posted at bigbadmedium.com]

That Brooklyn duo, Heltah Skeltah, would have a “much anticipated” release in 2008, a full decade since their last album is nothing short of amazing. This is due to member, Sean Price, who resurrected himself in the form of “the brokest rapper you know” on his out-of-nowhere solo debut, 2005’s Monkey Barz. With that album, and its followup, 2007’s Jesus Price, Superstar, Price, a.k.a. Ruck, set the stage for this reunion.

Price is joined by his gravel-voiced partner in crime, Rock. Together, the two continue the general trend of Price’s solo albums: rhymes that are at once threatening and amusing, with gun talk and chest thumping mixed in with a piercing wit, sometimes directed at themselves. This is a delicate balancing act that few should attempt, but these two do it perfectly. The imagery they use is often hilarious and over the top: “When I fucked Rhianna, ain’t use no umbrella/If the the bitch have twins, we namin’ ‘em both Ella…Ella…” It is a fantastic collection of verses, but they are all interchangeable from track to track, and for the most part, no particular concepts emerge on the tracks. Production on the album is decent high-octane underground stuff, but can’t escape comparisons to the Justus League-heavy sound of Sean Price’s two albums. There are certainly some good contributions, notably from Sic Beats (“Smack Muzik”) and Stu Bangas (“Ruck & Roll”), but Khrysis’ atypical swinging head nodder, “The Art of Disrespeckinization” is probably the strongest beat on the album. Not bad, but not great either.

Overall, this is a high-quality underground album from two original, if ill-mannered, voices in hip hop. It loses minor points for lack of variety in the tracks, and for production that doesn’t quite stand up to its Sean Price predecessors. Still, it is more than worth a listen, and hopefully means continued success for the re-invented Heltah Skeltah.

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8. snoop dogg – ego trippin’

Geffen

Nine albums in, the D-O-Double G is sure a long way from the Long Beach kid who redefined west coast hip hop nearly two decades ago.  A husband and father well into his 30′s, he even stars in a reality TV series, a genre which didn’t even exist in 1992.  Like many of his 90′s contemporaries, Snoop is finally having to acknowledge aging on record, and examine how the changes he is undergoing fit into the persona he’s spent years building.  This album does an above average job at this, with plenty of interesting plot twists along the way.

Moving away from the Neptunes-helmed sound that led his 2004 resurgence, and the producer-by-committee approach that produced Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, Snoop hands the reigns largely over to Teddy Riley and DJ Quik this time.  The beats are varied and overall very good.  QDT (aka Quik, Dogg, & Teddy) put together a string of heavily 80′s influenced tracks, the best of which are the Isley-sampling Press Play, the awesome cover of Cool by Morris Day, and the Bruce Hornsby-reworking Can’t Say Goodbye (which is amazingly distinct from  Tupac’s classic, Changes).  Other producers do about half the tracks too, and there are some good moments: Shawty Redd’s atmospheric sex romp, Sexual Eruption, Frequency’s darkly swinging Make It Good and Nottz’s lurching Deez Hollywood Nights.

The rapping on this album is certainly serviceable, but Snoop gets some points deducted for admitted use of ghostwriters.  That said, there’s no reason to think he’s the only one in the industry who does it, and the end result is decent, so we’ll have to let it slide.  He definitely took songs in a lot of different directions, and many of his zaniest experiments hit pay dirt.  His country song, My Medicine, featuring Willie Nelson and Everlast was great, and his Zapp sendup, Sexual Eruption was one of the best tracks of the year.  There was also a lot of introspective material, the best being the “I’ll be home soon” dedication to his wife, Been Around the World.  It was actually when he stopped pushing boundaries that the album lost steam.  About a quarter of the 20 songs were totally unnecessary, genric filler, and detracted from the overall album.  Still, the high points justified a few misfires to make this one of the better albums of the year.

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7. z-ro | crack

rap-a-lot

Certain rap scenes have certain musical roots.  This tends to develop organically: producers make music based on what was popular locally when they were young, or what their parents were listening to.  LA has Parliament-style funk, Detroit has Motown samples and influences from the local techno scene, and Houston has the blues.  From UGK to Swisha House, the influence of delta blues on Houston’s rap scene is unmistakeable, and perhaps no one personifies it better than Joseph McIvey, a.k.a. Z-Ro.

In his first album back from a stint in state prison, Z-Ro makes it quite clear that his life has been rough.  Incarceration, scandalous women, and well-armed haters all figure prominently on this album.  In fact, other than one out-of-place one-for-the-ladies track that just reeks of the label telling him to lighten up and make a usable single, he maintains a screw face for basically the whole album.  As much of a drag as this sounds like on paper though, it is very well done, and Z-Ro is a very skilled rapper.  With his baritone voice, sometimes rapping, sometimes singing, he does what a proper bluesman should: make something beautiful out of life’s drama and struggle.

Production on the album is pretty boilerplate Houston blues-funk tunes.  Overall it is fairly subdued, and fits with the album nicely.  Z-Ro handles several of the beats himself, and Rap-A-Lot mainstay, Mr. Lee, makes a few more.  The latter probably has the most engaging track: If That’s How You Feel is a punchy horn sample and slinky synth track that is probably the most danceable beat on the album, and ironically, is about not dancing: “I’m a head bussa, but I don’t think I’m better than nobody else, I just can’t move like Usher.”

A far cry from the full-on diamonds and wood grain boasting that has taken over Houston rap in the last half of this decade, this album is a throwback, in the best sense of the word, to Houston rap of the 1990′s.  It is sober and brooding, but still extremely accessible.  Hopefully, life improves for Z-Ro, but if this is the result of trials and tribulations, it’s hard to be mad at them.

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6. guilty simpson – ode to the ghetto

stone’s throw

While everybody was busy thinking up new nicknames for their buss-it-babies and supermanning dat hoe, Detroit quietly put out some of the best rap albums this year.  The first is the Stone’s Throw debut from protege of the late J Dilla, Guilty Simpson. Ode to the Ghetto is certainly that: a stark look at life in the hood that both laments and and celebrates various aspects of drug culture, poverty, hustling, and women.

Since these are all topics that have been covered many times, it takes a unique voice to tell the story in a way that is engaging once again.  Simpson is no verbal acrobat.  He won’t blow anyone away with elaborate metaphors or obscure references.  The relative simplicity of his lines makes them somehow more vivid though.  In some ways, it’s comparable to the impact of Ernest Hemingway’s brief, direct sentences, but I’ll stop short of calling Guilty the hood Hemingway.  His one-liners are a bit on the blunt side, but there is definitely a flatted, dry sense of humor there: “Barely have a pot for roast/But always have pots for coke.” Guests are relatively few on the album, and the big feature attraction is Sean Price’s verse on Run.  Overall, it’s quality work on the mic, and the production is defintely on point as well.

Produced by a combination of Stone’s Throw affiliates from California and hometown heros from Detroit, the beats on the album are a fittingly dark and dusty background.  Detroit soul sampling is more or less absent from the record.  In its place are an offbeat collection of obscure samples that mix with sparse drums and quirky synthesizers.  Some of the beats are subdued head nodders, others powerful and dramatic.  Standouts include Oh No’s spaced out, grimy Footwork and Mr. Porter’s (a.k.a. Kon Artis of D-12) violins and slowly stutter-stepping drums on Robbery.

Overall, this is a very good record and an interesting twist on the signature sound of Detroit contemporaries like Black Milk and Slum Village.  One of the better acts to emerge from the city in recent years, there seems to be a lot to look forward to from him.

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Why do we hate Universal Mind Control?

Common – Universal Mind Control
Geffen, 2008

Rating: 3 of 5

On paper, this looks like my kind of Common album.  Com drops the fatherly boho schtick he’s gradually grown into and makes a *fun* album!  Not a pedestrian Kanye beat in sight, and no sign of his flaccid mixes, which have run 2 consecutive Common albums into the ground.  Instead, he calls in the Neptunes and Mr. DJ for a retro, electro vibe (Where do I sign up?!).  I was all set to fly in the face of my hater contemporaries and tell them to loosen their crocheted pants and take that nag champa stick out of their ass.  Loosen up and have *fun*!  The sad fact of the matter, however, is that for the most part, they were right.

UMC is a set of 10 songs, totaling less than 40 minutes in length.  It would fit on a single 12″ record.  If that’s not retro, I don’t know what is.  The record opens with the title track, a Bambaata-aping electro party bounce with the aid of Pharrell on the hook.  So far, so good.  Common is flowing fairly sparsely, but after all, it’s an electro song.  The fast tempo makes it tough for most people to squeeze bars too full of syllables.  True enough, but as the tempos slow back to normal on later tracks, it becomes clear that Com is on straight elementary mode.

Now Rashid Lynn has never been a complex emcee, structurally speaking.  This is the man who gave us “I’m a child of the unh…the ’87 unh…,” and we loved him for it.  If he wasn’t a verbal acrobat, he also wasn’t one to waste words, and there was a lot of impact in those easy-flowing rhymes.  I suppose the most troubling aspect of this album isn’t that he lightens up and sacrifices gravity for accessibility.  It’s that he sucks at it.

“Sometimes the best things are not in your plans/You came to the sand and got more than a tan.”  The man who told us if he’s going to change the world, it’s going to be through [his daughter] is now a free and easy beach bum that doesn’t write well?  God I hope he wasn’t wearing capris when recorded this.  The album mostly alternates between mindless fluff like this and hopelessly blunt sex rhymes that are the rap equivalent of sex scene dialog written by pimple-faced high school boys.  There is a little standard hip hop bragging, but even that mostly falls flat.  

On a slightly more positive note, there is some good production work here.  The grooves are cooler, and more synthesized than on any past Common album, except maybe the musical pariah that is Electric Circus.  Unlike EC, however, this album is too short for any extended flights of…whatever.  Aside from the title track, the Clipse-esque Neptunes guitar licks and synths on Announcement, the anthemic stomp of Gladiator, and the frenetic electro bounce of Everywhere are all winners.  The latter is probably the best-executed track on the album, with Martina Topley-Bird dropping reverb’ed-out vocals that sat nicely with the groove, and once again, Com’s hyper-simplified flow fitting with the overclocked beat.  

I really wanted to like this album, and I’m still probably going to easy on it by rating it a 3, but this is simply not up to par.  Whether Common is pulling a Jay-Z, and completely giving up on creating anything stimulating in his late career, or this is just another left turn by a man who has now made three (EC, Be, and this one) in his 15+ years of rhyming, is hard to say.  It’s time to admit, however, that it has been about a decade since Common was in his prime as a rapper, and he may never reach that level again.  Then again, four left turns and you’re going straight.

This is the laziest blog entry in history.

It’s not even an entry. Just a link to an article I wrote. On someone else’s blog.

You waited seven months for this shit.

Here
.