Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire - Lost in Translation (2011)

I'll be honest with you, folks.  I'm having a hell of a time figuring out where to start with this one.  I guess the cover art(?) is as good a place as any to kick this off.  It features a fairly voluptuous, blue-haired woman, throwing back a .40, while sitting on the toilet.  Meanwhile, our protagonist, Mr. Muthafuckin' (don't forget the Muthafuckin') eXquire,  is in the background bent over the bathtub, presumably vomiting.  If the cover piques your interest, the first track you're treated to is "Triple F," eXquire's preemptive warning to those who would try to leach off the income his music career will inevitably land him.  For a guy who was working in a parking garage this time two years ago, he shows impressive confidence in his ability to build his rapping into a real career.  Oh, and "Triple F" features the word "fuck" approximately eighty times in three and a half minutes.

If you're even semi-familiar with New York underground hip-hop, you'll immediately recognize a few of the beats eXquire uses here.  He recycles a number of old El-P beats, notably "Vein" and "Pigeon" off of The Cold Vein on "Chicken Spot Rock" and "Build-a-Bitch," respectively.  Esoteric, Jake One, and Necro beats also make appearances.  Some of the mixing, specifically early in the album, sounds pretty muddy.  I can't tell if it's intentional, or not.  It would fit the whole mystique that eXquire seems to be aiming for, but the production values are noticeably better on tracks towards the end.  I can't really give eXquire too much credit for the beats, though.  It was a very good selection, but most of them were almost directly ripped from other tracks.

Using classic, recognizable beats can be a double-edged sword.  Yeah, you get to ensure that your tape is going to have great beats, but you're also going to inevitably draw comparisons to the original track, as Fashawn learned when he released Ode to Illmatic a few years back.  eXquire manages to separate himself from the original tracks by dramatically shifting the tone and subject matter.  For example, as I mentioned above, "Chicken Spot Rock" uses a beat originally from Cannibal Ox's "Vein." "Vein," is a track about how stereotypical portrayals of blacks can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and how people need to embrace what makes them unique and transcend those stereotypes before they are destroyed by them.  eXquire transformed it into an ode to fried chicken and liquor (I'm going to go ahead and assume/hope the irony there is intentional).  The result is that you have two tracks with the same beat, but the intent is so different that it's impossible to really compare them against one another.

Seeing a guy throw a nod to the underground scene with his beats is refreshing, and was a definite treat for an El-P fan, such as myself, but what really makes Lost in Translation is eXquire, himself.  I can't tell how much of eXquire is real, and how much is just stage persona, but I really don't care.  Even if it's all an act, it's believable.  He doesn't have any delusions of being a thug, he's just a struggling guy from the hood with an affinity for chicken, malt liquor, and good head.  The general unimpressiveness of his life makes it seem that much more real.  If it wasn't so funny, it might even be depressing.  What does he have to gain by writing a track about urinating in public?  It doesn't make him seem any more hardcore, it certainly doesn't make his life seem glamorous.  It's the same type of uncomfortable honesty that propelled Danny Brown to fame.

Most of the tracks that will end up being remembered from Lost in Translation will be the ones with eXquire flaunting his over the top hood ruggedness.  Spread throughout, though are tracks with a very different tone; a softer, more introspective tone.  Tracks like "I Should Be Sleeping," "Weight of Water," and "Nuthin Even Matters (Regrets)" show a level of desperation and guilt not even hinted at in the other tracks.  I feel like "Build-a-Bitch" was supposed to have a similarly serious tone.  The track ultimately falls flat, though.  He is clearly uncomfortable on it, and it ends up being one of the funnier tracks on a tape fully of chuckle-worthy tracks, as a result.

 As a whole, the first half of the tape far outclasses the second half.  Much of the energy found at the beginning of the album disappears after "Lou Ferigno's Mad." Both of the skits are barely smirk-worthy the first time you hear them, and become something you'll find yourself skipping on subsequent listens.  "Lovesponge" represents the low point, though.  It's a track that was supposed to be jokingly misogynistic, but ends up just being uncomfortable. "Galactus Redux" provides a much needed injection of energy, but has eXquire adopting a harder tone, which is unbecoming for him.

The final track, however, makes waiting through the previous six well worth it.  Like many of you reading this, it's the track that first brought Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire to my attention.  "The Last Huzzah!" is an inarguably great track.  eXquire's affinity for El-P beats paid off for him in spectacular fashion. He score an El-P feature, and with El-P comes fellow underground notables, Das Racist, Danny Brown, and Despot.  El-P drops what might be the best verse of 2011 and Danny Brown sounds as good as he ever has.  While eXquire's verse doesn't necessarily stand out among the crowd, he didn't exactly feel like he didn't fit among such company.  I can only hope that more collaborations between this group will come in the future.

Ultimately, the highs of Lost in Translation, far overshadow the lows.  It's a tape that could have done with having a few tracks left of the floor, but you can't really fault a guy for experimenting a bit on a free mixtape.  Were this a studio album, I might be a little less inclined to give tracks like "Lovesponge" a pass, but for free?  I'm glad to see a guy with a burgeoning career step out of his comfort zone a bit.  It gives me faith that he's going to keep expanding his repertoire and not get stale like so many rappers do after their first handful of releases.

Best Tracks: "Huzzah!", "Chicken Spot Rock", "I Should Be Sleepin", "Nuthin Really Matters (Regrets)", "The Last Huzzah"

Overall: 82/100

Danny Brown - XXX (2011)

There probably wasn’t an album or mixtape to come out in 2011 that was as polarizing as XXX by Danny Brown.  Between Danny’s yelping bleat of a voice, abrasive content and… unusual style, there is plenty here for traditional hip-hop fans to hate.  Whether you like it or not, though, Danny Brown is going to make you experience his world.

Danny steals the show on this album, but the production shouldn’t be underestimated, either.  The beats were handled by a mish-mash of relatively unknown young producers and they provide a great backdrop for Danny’s tales of drug and excess.  SKYWLKR’s beats, specifically, really bring out the best in Danny.  The grimy electronic samples on tracks like “Bruiser Brigade”  immediately remind the listener of drug fueled depravity in a poorly lit, trashy club.  There is enough variety in the production to give XXX a lot of replay value, as well.  Featuring electronic samples, as well as brass, pianos and the traditional drum machines, pretty much everybody is going to be able to find at least a beat or two that they really like.

While the beats are interesting and do a great job setting the tone of the album, Danny himself is what makes XXX.  From the first track, we’re introduced to the concept as well as our anti-hero protagonist.  It’s a (hopefully) dramatized version of Danny himself.  He’s a melting pot of anger, depression, debauchery, and insanity.  He’s on the brink of successful music career and the pressure to succeed has pushed him consume any kind of mind altering substance he can get his hands on.  Tracks like “Die Like a Rockstar” show that he’s fully aware that his lifestyle is destructive, but establish that he really doesn’t care.  Danny spends the majority of the album riding the line between hardcore gangsta and sketchy crackhead, using pitching changes to tilt his persona one way or another as he sees fit.  As the album progresses, he tones down the sexual explicitness and sheds his persona that he establishes for the first 12 tracks and we’re introduced to a little bit deeper look at Danny’s life.  ”DNA” and “Scrap or Die” tell of the hardships he went through before his rap career, from having drug-addicted parents to living in poverty and stealing to survive.  He shows a maturity at the end of the album that isn’t there in the beginning.  It almost sounds like a completely different album.  It’s nice to have a little bit of change of pace, but the transition was too sudden and too drastic, in my opinion, especially for a concept that was working extremely well.

Overall, XXX is an album that you are either going to absolutely love or absolutely hate.  Danny’s delivery and lyrics are extremely polarizing.  If you take it too seriously, you’re going to be horrified by some of the explicitly violent or sexual (often both) things Danny says here.  I think the reason for the sudden change in pace halfway through the album is to establish that he’s not really the person that he pretends to be for the first half, though.  While I think the transition from part 1 to part 2 could have been done more smoothly, the shift was probably necessary.  It puts a relate-able human face on Danny.  It’s hard to sympathize with a character whose primary concerns are doing drugs caving girls’ faces in with his penis, but give him drug addicted parents and a rough upbringing and suddenly he’s less of a villain than a tragic, cautionary tale.  XXX is going to be remembered for the persona Danny adopts in the first half, rather than the introspection we see in the second, though.  He’s crude, he’s abrasive, he’s annoying, he’s just an overall awful person, and I loved it.

Best Tracks: XXX, Die Like a Rockstar, Monopoly, Blunt after Blunt, 30

Overall: 89/100

Ta-Ku - 24 (2011)

Perth, Australia based producer Ta-Ku had been on the outskirts of my radar for the past two years, steadily releasing quality beat tapes and instrumental EP’s, but never really making me sit up and notice him amongst the high influx of talented beat smiths flooding the internet in the last decade.  Perhaps best known for his J Dilla Tribute series, I didn't get hooked on his work until I listened to his beat tape ’24′, just over a month ago.  Yes, I'm late.

Like many beat tapes, 24 is a collaboration project.  The idea came from Ta-Ku’s friendship with Soulection co-founder Joe Kay, and the premise was simple. Create one beat, fit to be aired on Soulection Radio, in 24 hours.  What came from the experiment was 13 crazy dope beats created by Ta-Ku over 13 days.

The idea was bold and challenging.  At risk of churning out half-assed beats to stay within the timeframe, Ta-Ku instead created 13 beautifully polished tracks, with each beat displaying Ta-Ku’s ability to make a robust sound without sacrificing for the sake of timeliness.  The intricacies on tracks like Hard to Imagine and 1, 2, 3, 4 make it hard to believe they were signed, sealed and delivered in 24 hours.  I don’t know the first thing about producing, but I’ve heard enough beats to know that it’s a time-intensive art and incredibly hard to select cohesive sounds and blend them together without it sounding like sonic pollution.  So for a producer to undertake a challenge like 24, and have each and every beat come out sounding so put together and fresh, is surely a testament to Ta-Ku’s finesse with digital audio gear and mad time-management skills.  Add to this his ear for choosing smooth samples and what you come away with is a sweet little beat tape with an impressive concept that would make even the most prolific producers sweat a little bit.

While there’s no throw away beats on here, there are one or two tracks that make you think he was having an uninspired day.  The track ’Another Day’ comes off feeling dull and bland.  One thinks the title was chosen in exasperation.  ‘I Love You’ lacks any heart and veers on annoying, with the looped vocal grating on the nerves. Lastly, the ‘Donut Interlude’ with its obvious Dilla salute lacks any type of charm or beauty it should have had with its link to one of the greatest to ever touch an MPC.

Last Word:  The entire concept of creating one beat a day for 13 consecutive days, and have most of the beats come out so well-executed, truly showcases Ta-Ku’s skills and cements him in the group of newer beat smiths to watch out for.  Oh and it’s completely free!

Overall:  82/100

Hus - Cognac Fruit (2011)

No frills, no foreplay, Cognac Fruit starts on a remix and gets straight to the point, delivering ten songs in just under 27 minutes.  You won’t get any shout outs, no drawn out intro/outro, no concept, no skits, no stems, no seeds.  This is unadulterated rapping over ravaged soul beats, aimed at listeners who like their hip hop served neat.

Hus is one half of Tha Connection, a duo out of Hempstead, NY.  Together with his partner SmooVth, they have released four true albums, each considered to be under appreciated 21st century gems.  Their style borrows heavily from a 90’s sensibility but manages to stay fresh thanks to their inclination for choosing soulful, contemporary beats.  If you want to get a feel for Hus’ origins then try Tha Connection albums Moon Water and Trapeze.

It’s a stripped down album to say the least.  There are no legendary producers and certainly no big name guests, in fact there’s only one guest, Mok Vurban.  Who?  Exactly.  This album is all Hus.  It serves to showcase Hus’ solo skills and reminds one of what solo albums actually meant, back before it was normal to have a guest on each track.  This is the common thread that runs throughout the whole album; it adheres to a 90’s mentality without stagnating in corny ‘I’m bringing the 90’s back yo!’ attitude.  You could easily picture Hus spitting over a 90’s Premo beat but the lush production pulls the album back from being a played out history lesson and instead creates a modern environment for Hus’ gritty delivery.  Yes, it’s got the boom bap drums but it’s layered with fluttering strings and jazzed out piano strokes instead of sampled loops and vocal scratching.  The bones are ’97 but the substance is thoroughly here and now.

You want a rugged NY rapper you get one.  If you want grand beats you get that too.  You just won’t get much of it.  With most songs clocking in at less than 3 minutes apiece, the shortness of the album is obvious.  Add to that the fact that three of the ten tracks are remixes from previous Tha Connection albums, you might feel like you are listening to a fan made compilation.  Short albums always have the safety of never growing tiresome but Cognac Fruit falters on the edge of being too sparse, you wonder why Hus was so thrifty, especially when you take into account that Tha Connection album Trapeze comes in with a staggering 27 songs.  Capable of building a robust album with SmooVth, but chose the short ‘n’ sweet route on his solo, it’s a bit puzzling.  What little we do get is incredible however and does make one excited for his future releases.

If you’re looking for a track list breakdown, you won’t find it on this review.  Come on now.  The album is only 27 minutes long.  No hand holding here.  Go listen to it and decide for yourself.



88/100

Mac Miller - Blue Slide Park (2011)

Somehow or another, Pittsburgh native, Mac Miller managed to become phenomenon in 2011.  Even before the release of his debut album, Blue Slide Park, there wasn’t a party playlist in all of North Dakota that didn’t have a Mac Miller son or two on it, as far as I could tell.  Coming off of the popularity of his mixtapes, Blue Slide Park became the first independently released debut album to hit #1 since Doggfood in 1995.

The production is predominantly handled by Pittsburgh beat maker, I.D. Labs.  Likely, as a bi-product of Mac trying to paint himself as weed rapper, the production is largely very slow and mellow.  Aside from a few bright spots, namely “Party on Fifth Ave” and “Under the Weather,” the beats are bland and forgettable.  I had a hard time listening to the whole album in one sitting, the blandness of the production makes it difficult to pay attention to for than a few songs at a time.

Mac Miller brings absolutely nothing to the table with his vocals.  He’s like an amalgamation of all the worst characteristics of all your favorite rappers and by no means a combination of UGK and John Lennon as he claims on “Smile Back.”  The message of the album seems to be that he likes to party, smoke weed and have sex; which is exactly what he rapped about on every one of his mix tapes.  There’s enough rappers like that out right now, we don’t need another Wiz Khalifa.  I’m not trying to say that you have to tackle major social issues in order to make a good album, but you have to have charisma.  Mac’s delivery is almost painful.  He sounds like he’s got emphysema, which may or may not be intentional, given his desperately trying to convince us that he smokes incredible amounts of marijuana.

Blue Slide Park is a bad album.  There just isn’t a time that would be appropriate for playing it.  It’s too mellow for parties, too shallow for individual listening and too bland for smoking to.  The worst part is this was Mac Miller’s attempt to establish himself as an artist.  The cover and first couple tracks lead you to believe that it’s going to be a deep, introspectively focused album, but after the title track, the whole concept just goes out the window in favor of sex, drugs and partying.  Whatever, Mac was trying to accomplish with Blue Slide Park, he utterly failed.  I’m upset that I turned down A Kingdom for Keflings to listen to this.

Best Tracks: Blue Slide Park, Party on 5th Ave, Under the Weather

Overall: 22/100

Live.Love.A$AP - A$AP Rocky (2011)

A$AP Rocky inexplicably became a millionaire in 2011; before he had a single official release, Sony signed him to a $3,000,000 deal, the biggest ever for an artist who hasn’t released a single album (Drake got about 2 Million).  A$AP owes this predominantly to online hip-hop forums, who went abuzz when he released his song “Peso” in August.  Of course, by signing that big of a deal, the expectations for A$AP’s first release were tremendous.  October’s Live.Love.A$AP was that release.
The production is handled by a whole host of producers, the most prominent being Clams Casino, who does five of the sixteen tracks.  Although I’m not a huge fan of some the effects used throughout the album, I was pleasantly surprised with the production.  Clams Casino and Spaceghostpurrp are the only producers to make an appearance I had heard of before this album, leaving six producers that I had never heard to do the other ten tracks.  Often times when there are as many producers working on an album as there are on Live.Love.A$AP, it destroys the aesthetic of the album as styles clash from track to track.  Thankfully, this isn’t the case with Live.Love.A$AP.  The beats are consistently top level, and maintain the same chill, ambient vibe throughout.  They border on, but never cross into monotony territory, perhaps a credit to having so many producers on the album.

Having good beats and production values is all well and good, but a major label didn’t invest seven figures in any of these producers; A$AP came into this tape with a lot of hype to live up to.  He responded by giving us sixteen tracks of sex, drugs and braggadocio.  In short, he’s Wiz Khalifa…  Maybe that’s a little harsh, A$AP Rocky is a  better MC than Wiz Khalifa.  He’s more along the lines of a Hodgy Beats sans any depth of subject matter.  Lyrically, A$AP is no more than above average, he’s far outclassed by other up-and-comers such as Kendrick Lamar and Big KRIT.  What A$AP Rocky brings to the table is versatility.  Despite the relative sameness of pacing in the beats on Live.Love.A$AP, he changes up his flow on almost every song, a practice that has earned him some scorn for being a biter.  There may be some legitimacy to those criticisms, but I’m more inclined to just look at it as a young rapper who is still trying to figure out his sound.

Is Live.Love.A$AP a mixtape that is going to shake the foundations of hip-hop?  Not at all.  Did it live up to the $3,000,000 hype associated with it?  Not in this reviewers opinion.  I feel as though A$AP Rocky is nothing more than a label trying to find the next OFWGKTA to cash in on the hipster market.  Live.Love.A$AP is definitely worth a spin, though, if for no other reason than we’re probably going to be hearing a lot more A$AP Rocky in the near future.  Personally, I’m very interested to see what kind of studio album he releases because, as he is now,  A$AP Rocky has absolutely no mainstream appeal and there’s no way Sony is going to let their $3,000,000 investment go to waste.

Best Tracks: Palace, Peso, Keep it G, Demons, Out of This World

Overall: 79/10

Elzhi - ELmatic (2011)

Anybody who knows hip-hop at all knows Illmatic.  The 1994 album by Nas is almost universally hailed as one of, if not the greatest hip-hop album ever made.  What MC, Elzhi, along with fellow Detroiters, Will Sessions, have done with ELmatic is taken the old beats off Illmatic, tweaked them a little bit, to bring them into the modern era and recorded his own vocals over these re-imaginings of the Illmatic beats.  A project like this is inevitably going to draw comparisons to the original, and Elzhi had big shoes to fill here.  Even Nas, himself, has never managed to escape the shadow of Illmatic.


The beats are classic, but the original DJ Premier and Large Professor versions were classics, so I don’t want to give too much credit to Will Sessions.  They were given gold and basically just polished it a little.  Live instruments are always refreshing to hear on hip-hop albums, though and they did make a few tweaks to make the aging Illmatic beats a bit more appealing to modern listeners.  The original samples are all still present, allowing ELmatic to maintain a similar vibe to the original.  The biggest problem I have is that for whatever reason, several of the tracks include extended periods of just the instrumentals playing, including over three straight minutes at the end of “One Love.”  I’ll never understand why artists include these extended instrumental portions, I’ve never met anybody who enjoys them.  I don’t mind when they’re use to segue into the next track, but that can be done in ten seconds; anything over a minute just detracts from the album.

While the beats on Illmatic are classic, the lyrics are legendary.  Elzhi has had a reputation as a great lyricist since his days with Slum Village, but when I first heard about this project, I scoffed at the idea of him being able to successfully recreate the feel and technical skill exhibited in Illmatic.  I assumed that, at best, it was going to be of a similar caliber to Fashawn’s similarly themed Ode to Illmatic mix tape, from last year.  That is to say, merely an above average tape.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Elzhi absolutely owns every track on here, at times rivaling and (I’m about to commit heresy here.) even surpassing Nas’s original rhymes.  Most of the tracks share a similar lyrical theme to their Illmatic equivalent, the notable exception is “It Ain’t Hard to Tell,”  which turns from a very braggadocious track into a narrative about Elzhi’s early life and rise to fame.

Remaking Illmatic was a risky move.  This could have very easily been an absolute disaster for Elzhi, especially if it had been a weaker release than Fashawn’s effort.  The gamble payed off for him, though and we’re treated to a stunning re-imagining of a legendary album, which succeeds in both paying homage to and building upon the original.  Elzhi shows off a level of lyrical ability that we have never seen from him before, making ELmatic arguably the best hip-hop release of 2011.

Best Tracks: Detroit State of Mind, Halftime, Memory Lane, Represent, It Ain’t Hard to Tell

Overall: 91/100

Common - The Dreamer/The Believer (2011)

Common is a rapper that could have retired ten years ago and still be considered one of the all time greats.  He’s got arguably more classic albums to his name than any other MC to ever do it, and he’s near universally respected because of it.  He’s one of my personal favorites, as well.  That being said, The Dreamer/The Believer is not Com’s best work, not by a long shot.  It is, however, quite possibly his best release since his 2005 classic, “Be.”

Those of you out there who know Common, know that him and producer, No I.D. have worked  together multiple times in the past, most notably on 1994′s, “Resurrection” (another one of Com’s classics).  So, these two Chicago veterans have chemistry; they understand each other, and this shows throughout the album.  The production has a very 90′s-esque feel to it, which I can only assume was the idea, since both Com and I.D. are in the twilight of their careers at this point and neither have found the success that they had together in the mid 90′s since.

Of note is the lack of guest features on the album, aside from the obligatory spot from “Pops” on the final track, all there is is Nas (who Common is releasing a collab with next year), soul artist, John Legend and poet, Maya Angelou.  The guests may be few, but they are all very well done.  Maya Angelou is a legend, and she brought out an original poem for the first track, “The Dreamer”.  Nas delivers a poignant verse on the album’s first single “Ghetto Dreams” and John Legend handles the chorus in spectacular fashion on “The Believer.”

Every part of The Dreamer/The Believer screams “positive hip-hop.”  Common has always been known for having a positive message to his music, but TD/TB takes it to a whole ‘nother level.  From the title of the album, to the music videos, to the production, to the lyrics, Common all but slaps you in the face with his positive message.  Quite frankly, it’s too much.  I’m all for positive hip-hop, but at least try to be subtle about it.  I don’t know whether the whole White House controversy got to him, or what, but Common leaves little to the imagination on this album.  He often comes across as more preachy and pretentious than positive.  The one outlyer in all this is “Sweet,” which takes an inexplicably harder tone, features Common doing braggadocio and for some reason takes shots at singer/rappers. *cough* Drake *cough*  While “Sweet” doesn't exactly fit in with the tone of the album, it does a fantastic job breaking up what could have potentially been an album that all just ran together into one unmemorable blob.

All and all, The Dreamer/The Believer isn't Common’s best, but it is still a good effort from a great MC and great producer.  It’s obvious that Common had a message that he wanted to get across with this album, but it’s unfortunate that he sacrificed wordplay to do so.  If nothing else, he at least makes FOX News look stupid for calling him a gangster rapper.

Best Tracks: The Dreamer, Ghetto Dreams, Blue Sky, Sweet, Celebrate, The Believer

Overall: 83/100

Blue Scholars - Cinemetropolis (2011)

Blue Scholars have come a long way since their last full length LP, 2007′s “Bayani.”  The concept behind Cinemetropolis is supposed to be a celebration of films, or something.  At least, that’s what Geo has said in interviews.  The titles of all the songs (excluding the first and last) are the names of film actors/actresses, directors and producers, with each song supposedly celebrating something about that particular person’s essence.  It’s a concept so abstract, that if Geo hadn’t explicitly told us, nobody would’ve ever gotten it.  The tracks all have little to nothing to do with films or cinema, focusing instead on the typical Blue Scholars subjects: politics, Seattle, etc.

Geologic has clearly developed as an MC over the past 5 years, he no longer has the monotone delivery that he was heavily criticized for on the group’s first releases, which sacrificed inflection for the sake of ensuring that his political charged lyrics were absolutely understandable.  The change takes some getting used to if you’re used to Geo’s old delivery.  The message seems somehow less powerful because of it; he’s lost some of his “poet turned rapper” vibe, trading it it for a more traditional delivery and flow.  It’s hard to fault a guy for becoming more diverse in flow and delivery, though.

Gone are the days of the booming drum machines, sampled guitar riffs and piano that characterized Sabzi’s early productions.  They’ve been replaced by synth beats.  From almost any other producer, I would be applauding the way the beats run into each other and the overall melodiousness of them, but I’ve come to expect more from Sabzi.  Instead of the slow, relaxed melodies typical of him, we’re given several beats that sound like they belong on a post “Late Registration” Kanye album.  Poppy.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, the Blue Scholars have changed.  The music is still good, but they’ve lost what made them unique.  Having beats that sound like Kanye’s wouldn’t be a bad thing… if this was a Kanye album.  I don’t listen to Blue Scholars for grandiose production with a traditional rapper, though.  I know, I can’t expect artists to never change their sound.  It has to happen, but I think Cinemetropolis was a step in the wrong direction for Blue Scholars.  Unfortunately, they won’t see it that way when it’s their most successful album yet.  Get ready to start hearing them on the radio soon, I guess…

Best Tracks: Cinemetropolis, Lalo Schifrin, Anna Karina, Slick Watts, Rani Mukerji

Overall: 77/100