Del the Funky Homosapien & Parallel Thought - Attractive Sin (2012)

My my, Del has been busy these last few years.  If he manages to put out all the releases he has scheduled for 2012, he will have put out seventeen releases in four years.  To put that in perspective, he only had ten releases in the first seventeen years of his career, most of which were group collaborations.  Unfortunately, none of those seventeen (that have been released so far) have been more than just pretty good.  His 2012 collaboration with production team Parallel Thought, Attractive Sin, fits into that category.  It’s a pretty good album that, in all honesty, probably isn’t going to be remembered 5 years from now.

While it doesn’t exactly have the stiffest of competition, Attractive Sin features arguably the best production we’ve heard Del rap over since Full Circle as a member of Hieroglyphics in 2002.  I’m always a fan of brass in hip-hop and this album features plenty of it. “Ownership” and “Different Guidelines,” specifically, feature very well executed, brass driven beats.  As a whole the production is notably more jazz influenced than what we’re used to hearing on a Del album.  Unfortunately, the beats border on monotonous by the end of the album.  The album is organized so that it starts relatively upbeat and gets progressively less so as it progresses, leaving the listener waiting for a grand finale that just never comes.  Ending the album with a catchy banger, or a particularly deep, moving song, or even just a song that really showed Del flexing his lyrical muscles a little bit would have done this album a world of good.  Instead, it ends with a total throw away track in “Front Like You Know.”  In an album all but devoid of choruses, organization is of the utmost importance, and I seems like Del and PT dropped the ball here.  It’s an album that is just hard to pay attention to for the full duration.

Almost no choruses means we’re treated to 40 minutes of straight Del verses.  He sounds very MF DOOM like here, spitting his verses with an endearing monotone laziness that is only enhanced by his signature drawl.  He takes advantage of all this time dedicated to verses by… rapping about how awesome he is.  Braggadocio has always been a staple of Del’s repertoire, but I can’t help but feel like he went a little overboard here.  As impressive as it is to be able to come up with enough rhyming compliments of yourself to fill 40 minutes of time, the shtick wears a bit thin after a while.  The stand out exception is “1520 Sedgwick.”  Named for the most widely accepted “birthplace” of hip-hop, Del gives his opinion of what exactly is “hip-hop,” as well as a healthy dose of hating on the media and record industry (another staple subject of Del’s).  Repetitive subject matter aside, I gotta say that Del is very impressive from a technical standpoint.  Despite the beats being, at times, very complicated, he manages to ride them all perfectly while maintaining very complicated, almost haphazard sounding, rhyme schemes.  That alone leaves me very optimistic for the upcoming Deltron 3030 sequel, Event II.

The biggest thing holding this album back from being truly good, or even great, is monotony.  I was folding clothes the first time I listened to it (i.e. not giving it my full attention) and didn’t notice the tracks switch from “Activated Sludge” (the 5th track) until I realized that I had been listening to what I though was the same song for ages only to find that I was already at the 9th track, “Blow Your Mind.”  This is a product of not only sameness in production staring in the middle of the album, but Del’s delivery.  He doesn’t add any cadence to his voice for the entirety of the album, delivering every verse in the same monotone drone.  Even Del sounds like he was bored with this by the end.  This is a great album to listen to closely to once and then relegate to background music while working or doing chores (felt like that laundry I was folding just flew by).

Best Tracks: On Momma’s House, Ownership, 1520 Sedgewick, Blow Your Mind

Overall: 77/100