Peconceptions: I had heard good things from friends, including Josh, but hadn’t listened until today.
Favorite track(s): Soldierfied, Livin Time, Hellohihey
Least Faves: What if it’s true
After Listening: This record is right up my alley—cerebral, socially conscious rap; nasty beats; a sort of hybrid of old school and new school, and while you can sense their influences, they aren’t overly derivative at all, in my opinion. Overall, I love it.
Rating: 4 stars
Preconceived Notions: Not many, I have no idea who they are. Rap I’m guessing?
After Listening: I feel like the 1st track made me a promise that the rest of the album very rarely fulfilled. It came out with a nice 70’s style funk beat, and nicely paced vocal trade offs. It’s a formula I would’ve liked to see them stick to, but too often I found the thing dipping into some gimmicky musical or lyrical theme. Most of the “sung” choruses get grating pretty quickly-so of course they’re repeated as frequently as possible. As with any album in the genre I get the attempts at humor and appreciate it, but too many times it was buried by some aspect I couldn’t stand. Its high points are higher than average, but they are few, and the low points are pretty low.
Favorite Tracks: “Solderifed”, “Livin time” – A Pat Bentar rhyme is worth a kudos. “Skeletons” – guess this is the general tone they were trying to hit all album and only got there occasionally.
Least Favorite: “What if it’s true” – kinda corny, and I hate the chorus, “Fever” – god I loathe reggae and this was somehow worse. “State of the World.”
Overall: 2.75
Just below average, which is a shame b/c I see the potential there.
listenatwork 