Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein (2001)

For my millions of fans out there that closely follow Review Hip-Hop, you may have noticed that this album has been mentioned in a handful of my posts.  The Cold Vein is one of those albums that most will hear mentioned very early on in their trek through the underground hip-hop world.  It's frequently cited as one of the most influential underground albums ever, as well as the best album that the Def Jux camp put out during their run as the most prominent underground label, in the early 00's.  I'm always wary of albums that get called "the best" of anything.  Nine time out of ten, those albums are a disappointment.  Still, there's that one time, where an album unquestionably lives up to the hype surrounding it.  The Cold Vein is one of, if not the best, not only Def Jux album, but hip-hop album of the last fifteen years.

When I initially heard The Cold Vein I wasn't particularly impressed.  I was something of lyrics snob at the time, and the abstract verses of Vast Aire and Vordul Mega didn't quite rub me the right way.  I felt as though they were using a too many non-sequiturs, to the point of just spouting a bunch of rambling nonsense.  It's an album that gets better every subsequent listen, though.  Every time I spin The Cold Vein, I find some new line that I finally understand, or see in a different way.  What I had initially thought were Ghostface Killah style non-sequiturs, were actually heavy social commentary about the state of American race relations and a vivid imagery of the poverty found in our cities.  It's a portrait of violence, desperation, and hopelessness that can, at times, leave the listener, himself feeling distressed.  There isn't another album that I've heard that can come close to putting me on the same emotional roller-coaster as The Cold Vein.  From the inconsolable hopelessness of "Iron Galaxy," to the anger and frustration of "Pigeon," and cautious optimism of "Scream Phoenix," every track sticks its message perfectly.

Between the two emcees present, Vast has easily more memorable and impactful verses.  That's not to say Vordul doesn't carry his own weight, quite the contrary, the album would undoubtedly be worse without his contribution.  During my own personal listen, his more energized, easily digestible verses serve mostly as breaks to Vast's more dense and weighty verses, giving me a moment to breath and take in what I've just listened to.  Treating him as such is a tremendous disservice, though.  While his verses don't have nearly as many memorable lines, they're just as, if not more clever and complicated once you figure out what you're listening to.  His verse on "Pigeon" is a great example,  it legitimately took me years to figure out that half of his lines in that verse weren't just there to continue the rhyme.

It can't be overstated how important El-P was in the success of The Cold Vein.  On release, he called it his best work, and he has yet to surpass it.  As I said, this is an album that takes at least a handful of listens to truly enjoy, and the thing that kept getting me to re-listen time and time again, even when I wasn't really feeling Vast and Vordul, was the beats.  Even if The Cold Vein was just an instrumental album, it would still be an essential listen for any self-respecting hip-hop head (in fact, there is an instrumental version called Cannibal Oxtrumentals).  They go a long ways towards establishing the mood for the album on their own, and never come anywhere near boring or redundant.  We're given ambiance, we're given bangers,  but they all maintain a certain futuristic, or industrial tinge, that assures the listener that this isn't any mere collection of tracks, this is an album, and is meant to be listened to as such.  There's a message here, and one track can't be fully understood without understanding the entire set.  Ultimately, rather than individual beats, this cohesion was El-P's greatest contribution to The Cold Vein.  

One benefit I get to enjoy in reviewing primarily older albums is that there are always at least a few other reviews already written by the time I get around to them.  I always take the time to read a few of these before I do my own.  One thing I noticed in a handful of these other reviews was that, where I saw production that aided in creating a cohesive message for the album, others saw beats that were similar to the point of being forgettable.  This isn't wrong.  You're probably not ever going to have any of these beats stuck in your head.  Many of them do sound very similar.  Many of them are relatively arrhythmic.  There isn't a single one that I could honestly call "catchy."  However, I can't stress enough how little this matters.  This was never an album that was supposed to be about the beats, the message is what matters.

The Cold Vein is an album that rose up from the dark underbelly of New York City.  It was born of poverty, violence, hopelessness, frustration, and anger.  It can be weighty, and even upsetting, at times.  Don't take that to mean it's all doom and gloom, though.  It's not merely Vast Aire and Vordul Mega expounding upon their disgust for the world in which they grew up.  It's an album meant to change that world for the better.  It's pointing out problems and their causes not out of disgust, but so that steps can be taken towards correcting them.  Rather than treating the urban poor like something shameful that needs to be hidden away from society, The Cold Vein treats them like people; people who are doing the best they can with the opportunities they've been given.  In the albums opening track, "Iron Galaxy", Vast raps:

"What you figure

That chalky outline on the ground is a father figure?

So he steps to the next stencil, that's a hustler

Infested with money and diamond clusters"

That line sums up The Cold Vein better than any other.  How can conditions be expected to improve when children are growing up in a situation where the richest, most successful people around them are hustlers, especially if those children are already lacking strong authority figures?  That's only going to start over the same cycle that lead to the aforementioned chalky outline.

Best Tracks:

Iron Galaxy, Atom, Real Earth, Pigeon, Scream Phoenix 

Overall:

96/100