ALBUM REVIEW: The Birth Of A Nation: The Inspired By Album
Originally posted on HipHopDX 10/7/2016
Rating: 4/5
The past few months have seen the long-awaited slave period film Birth of a Nationmired in controversy. Nate Parker, the film’s creator, lead actor and co-writer, has had quite the task escaping the cloud cast by his past acquittal of a college year rape accusation and all but saw the buzz of his Sundance Film Festival darling halted. To add valleys to the uphill battle, Parker’s rendition of the story of Nat Turner has also been met with a plethora of mixed reviews. For what the movie may lack, The Birth of a Nation: The Inspired By Album offers up a suitable alternative.
Boasting of a laundry list of Hip Hop’s elite and R&B stars, the original soundtrack seamlessly mixes artists across multiple rap subgenres to create a sonic experimentation of music that spits in the face of sedition. Lecrae and Leon Bridges embody the film’s rebellious persona with their own haunting, organ-backed and percussion laced opus “On My Own.” Lecrae preaches the plight of our ancestors with powerful bars “I’ve been pushing hard/I’ve been praying harder/Only Heaven can help me/They took my Earthly father/Mama they promised me death and walked me into my grave/I’d rather die a free man than live on Earth a slave/I’m fighting for people they put in chains/they stripped our heritage they took our names/Put our women to shame.”
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ALBUM REVIEW: Prodigy – Untitled EDM EP
Originally posted on HipHopDX 8/17/2016
Rating: 3.4/5
Prodigy has been delivering his special brand of trendsetting for the better part of 23 years. After a two-year hiatus, the Mobb Deep capo is back and pushing the boundaries on his music to places he has never previously been as his partner Havoc appeases longtime fans alongside The Alchemist. His latest extended player shows the Queensbridge MC painting his brash and braggadocios bars over a canvas of EDM and Dubstep.
The EP opens with “Black Panther,” a scratch-heavy and synth-driven Baauer soundbed. While Prodigy is known for his unorthodox approach to riding the beat, his flow comes off more jarring than usual as he delivers his street tested bars we’ve come to love him for. P holds his own, however, with his patented flavor in lines like, “Thought you getting over but I’m slicing faces open, thought they could get away with murder but the reaper coming/repeat the first two bars describe ‘em to a Tee, I keep my enemies far (get) the fuck away from me”.
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ALBUM REVIEW: Fredo Santana – Mafia
Originally posted on HipHopDX 8/2/2016
Rating: 2.1/5
In a world where black men are continuing to become hashtags, be it over inner-city turmoil or police brutality, the increasing rise in this generation of rappers glorifying violence remains a conundrum. The modern-day ground zero for what ails the urban community, Chicago, has churned out some of rap’s most notorious trap rappers as of late. Fredo Santana is one of those rappers and as the older cousin of Chief Keef, Fredo takes his brash style of rap to the next level with Fredo Mafia.
Fredo is not the rapper you seek out for content, flexibility, or cleverness. With his ability to ride a beat resting somewhere between Silkk The Shocker and Talib Kweli, Fredo is not the MC you’d wish to listen to for technical ability either. Fredo’s appeal arrives in the form of how he paints the picture of the life he lives and the life of how we’ve come to expect those struggling in the streets of Chicago to live.
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EDITORIAL: Rich Homie Quan & The Disconnect Between Hip Hop Generations
Originally posted on HipHopDX 6/15/2016
So if you haven’t heard by now, the VH1 Hip Hop Honors are back. And with that also came the trend of hiring today’s rappers to pay homage to a pioneer whose lyrics they don’t know. There’s fumbling through a word or two. There’s the Lupe Fiasco head scratching moment when he forgot ATCQ lyrics. Then there’s Rich Homie Quan. There are few things sacred in Hip Hop: the lyrics to Notorious BIG’s verse on “Get Money” being one of them.
Before you can really address the man who from here forth will now be affectionately known as #RichHomieKaraoke, one has to really wonder who made the call to choose him as the artist to honor Biggie’s verse. Were Lil Kim and Diddy consulted? How did that conversation go?
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ALBUM REVIEW: Horseshoe Gang – Anti-Trap Music
Originally posted on HipHopDX 5/29/2016
Rating: 3.5/5
The quartet of Demetrius, Julius, Kenny, and Dice represent the last of a dying breed in Hip-Hop right now: the rap group. One listen to the Horseshoe Gang and you can hear why West Coast luminary KXNG Crooked took them under his wing. With their latest album Anti-Trap Music, they’re looking to show the game that there is something to be said for integrity.
Part of the appeal of West Coast Hip Hop is that it’s brash, in your face and to the point. The Crooked I featured intro shows just that as the first verse opens, “This ain’t trappin’, this is rappin’/if you the captain of the ship then we the Kraken”. Throughout proclamations of “We tryna make harder shit than N.W.A.”, the rap troupe hold their own as they bully the dark, pounding bass with their C.O.B. Leader.
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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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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.”
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