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Updated: December 11, 2018

EDITORIAL: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill Fan Loyalty

Originally posted on HipHopDX 5/10/2016

It’s May in Los Angeles. My friend Tami just moved to the area and we’re looking for things to do. The Do Over season is about to begin, and that’s great, but there will be plenty of time for those. What better way to introduce a friend to the West Coast than a concert that we couldn’t catch back home in Michigan? We’ll go see Lauryn Hill!

Years had passed since her shows in San Francisco and Oakland that left fans wondering what they were listening to, or who they had saw. It had been years since Rock The Bells 2010 in NY where concertgoers so fed up with her they walked away from the stage in droves. The 2010 Rock The Bells in D.C., the one where she was three hours late to a show because she desperately needed a manicure and pedicure was also an afterthought.

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Updated: December 11, 2018

ALBUM REVIEW: Freeway – Free Will

Originally posted on HipHopDX 5/3/2016
Rating: 3.4/5

The diagnosis last fall has yet to slow the State Property Lieutenant General down. With his first solo studio release since 2012’s Diamond in the Ruff, Free aims to re-introduce himself with Free Will.

From the opening track, there’s a noticeable and refreshing change in Freeway’s vocal expression. One knock on Freeway from detractors was that his higher pitched, sing-song delivery wore thin after only a few tracks. Free Will displays a matured and refined flow that a 13-year veteran should have. Sonically, Free Will boasts some of the best and most complete production of Free’s career. S. Frank & Scholito, Pittsburgh mainstay Girl Talk, Tryfe, and L.E.S. & Chemist hold their own at providing a prodigious backdrop for a rap maestro accustomed to having Just Blaze, Jake One, Bink!, and Needlz behind the boards.

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Updated: December 11, 2018

ALBUM REVIEW: Euroz – For No Good Reason

Originally posted on HipHopDX 4/16/2016
Rating: 3.6/5

Wafting somewhere between rapper and vocalist stands Las Vegas MC Euroz. Many of today’s urban contemporary male artists find themselves standing in the shadow casted by Drake, serving as a one-stop shop for bars and vocals. That hustle isn’t lost on Euroz. For No Good Reason shows just how versatile artists in this era have to be.

Euroz enlists Belgium born producer Alex Lustig to provide the perfect southern inspired meets OVO instrumental landscape for his confident flow and cocky crooning. For No Good Reason opens over vibrant, triumphant keys and an infectious base line that displays Euroz chronicling how it took spending time in jail to realize his dreams with “The judge threw the book at me I read that shit from front to back, chapters of my life was took and still I don’t want nothing back / I ain’t changed I just let that shit inspire me, mastered the pen behind bars oh the irony.”

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Updated: December 11, 2018

ALBUM REVIEW: AG Da Coroner – Sip The Nectar

Originally posted on HipHopDX 4/10/16
Rating: 3/5

Back with his follow up effort to his 2013 EP Crushed Grapes on Man Bites Dog Records, Brooklyn’s AG Da Coroner serves up the gritty, street sound New York was once known for with Sip the Nectar. In the 90s and through the early 00s, the brash tales and wordplay of New York MCs shined bright in juxtaposition to the funk inspired West Coast sound. Unfortunately for AG, in 2016, Sip the Nectar comes off as an attempt to hold on to a lost sound that hasn’t been in demand since Mobb Deep spurned an offer from Shady Records to fizzle out on G-Unit.

The album opens up over an increasingly repetitive and generic Statik Selektah soundbed for “The Game Changer” as AG introduces himself as the man of the people in an underwhelming frenzy with bars like, “Don’t ever try to play me, my pops dukes is Johnny my moms name Daisy /The nigga they created came out a little crazy” and enforces his bravado with “So miss me with the hoopla or end up where my shoes are (on the floor)” and “I wish one of you fools would say something to me, I face slap the shit out of all of you jive coonies.”

Marcel Friday

Social Media Manager Creative & Social Strategist Journalist

EDITORIAL: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill Fan Loyalty

ALBUM REVIEW: Freeway – Free Will

ALBUM REVIEW: Euroz – For No Good Reason

ALBUM REVIEW: AG Da Coroner – Sip The Nectar