Nas - Life is Good (2012)

Nas is the best example I can think of of how having a great debut album can both make and ruin a career.  Nas’ debut, Illmatic, is not only his crowning achievement, but arguably the greatest hip-hop album ever recorded.  That’s something to put on a résumé; there aren’t many who can claim such an achievement.  However, having such a highly regarded album in his discography has, unfortunately, meant that many of his subsequent albums have been widely considered disappointments at the time of release, regardless of quality.  His second album, It Was Written, for example, received very mixed reviews, but is commonly regarded as a classic now. His 2001 album, Stillmatic, was similarly maligned by critics during its time, but has since been embraced as a classic.  More recently, Nas seems to have escaped from Illmatic’s shadow, somewhat.  Whether it be due to Nas’ greater consistency on the mic, or a growing population of listeners looking to hear and rain praises upon any and all things “non-commercial,” Nas’ more recent efforts have been largely well received.  That includes Grammy nominations for both Hip-Hop is Dead and Untitled.  I wasn’t surprised to see Life is Good be released to similar accolades.  That being said, Life is Good is better than anything Nas has released since God’s Son in 2002.

Any Nas album is going to begin and end with the vocals.  Nas is almost universally considered to be a top 5 MC of all time.  One Nas’ biggest struggles, however has been finding topics that he really seems to care enough about to write passionate verses.  He has historically been his best when facing some sort of adversity in his life or career.  Illmatic was his debut, It Was Written had him facing the prospect of following up such a widely acclaimed album as Illmatic, Stillmatic was motivated by his feud with Jay-Z and God’s Son was motivated by the death of his mother.  Since God’s Son, Nas has been dabbling in politically motivated tracks, mafioso type stuff and, of course, a fair amount (like an entire album’s worth) of tracks about the good ole days of hip-hop.  Frankly, most of it sounded kind of half-hearted.  As I said above, Life is Good is Nas’ best release since God’s Son, so what is motivating Nas this time, around?  A few things, it turns out.  The most prominent one is his extremely messy, not to mention extremely public divorce from singer, Kelis (of “Milkshake” fame).  He pays homage to this on the album cover, which features Nas sitting with a dress that is unmistakably similar to Kelis’ wedding dress.  One of the standout tracks of the album, “Daughters” has Nas musing about the responsibilities of fatherhood and how his celebrity status has effected his ability to be a father.  It comes in the wake of another public incident in Nas’ life, in which his 17 year old daughter posted a picture on Twitter of  her condom-filled jewelry box that she keeps on her nightstand.  For those of you who aren’t interested in hearing about Nas’ lady troubles, rest assured, there is plenty more here to keep you interested.  This is still Nas, so of course he can’t resist staying completely away from talking about the past.  He appropriately dedicates “Loco-Motive,” a track that sounds like it was ripped straight out of 1996, to his “trapped in the 90′s niggas.”

In a refreshing change of pace for Nas, Life is Good  happens to feature actually interesting production, compliments of No I.D. and Salaam Remi.  I might go so far as to say these are the best beats we’ve heard Nas over since Illmatic if it weren’t for the few inexplicable missteps.  ”Reach Out,” while featuring Nas at his best, treads dangerously close to 80′s boy band territory.  ”Summer On Smash” is kind of catchy, but dedicates far too much time to hooks, leaving us with probably a minute worth of verses in an over 4 minute song.  ”You Wouldn’t Understand” sounds like a pop track that got released 20 years too late.  Those missteps are easily overshadowed by a cornucopia of interesting, if not necessarily innovative beats.  ”Accident Murderers” makes better use of the organ than any track I’ve heard since “Pigeon” off of Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein.  ”Loco-Motive,” “Cherry Wine,” and “Nasty” all stand out as having better beats than almost anything we’ve heard Nas over lately, as well.

I can’t see Life is Good ever being considered to be in the same echelon as Illmatic, or even Stillmatic and It Was Written, but that’s not to say it isn’t still a very good album, deserving of all the acclaim it has gotten.  It’s definitely an album of the year candidate.  The only real flaw is that it tries too hard at times to pander to mainstream listeners.  Tracks like “Summer On Smash” not only don’t live up to the high standards that I’ve come to hold Nas to, but seem out of place in the album as a whole, somewhat derailing the ambiance that tracks leading up to it establish.  Not to harp on “Summer On Smash” in particular, but it’s presence is all the more baffling due to it not being released as a single.  I could understand if it was just a track made to get radio play, but that’s not the case.  In the long run, people tend to forget about such tracks though, this is going to be remembered as an album borne of heartache and adversity.  It’s unfortunate for Nas that he seems to need that in order to produce good music.  Whether coming out with a good album is worth everything that has happened to him over the last couple years is something only he can decide.  At least he’ll probably get another Grammy nomination.

Best Tracks: No Introduction, Loco-Motive, Accident Murderers, Cherry Wine, Nasty (iTunes bonus track)

Overall: 87/100

Gift of Gab - The Next Logical Progression (2012)

Blackalicious MC, Gift of Gab has been a mainstay of the West Coast underground scene for almost twenty years now, and even though Blackalicious hasn’t put out a release since 2005, Gab has managed to keep himself busy with a string of impressive solo albums.  The latest in that line is 2012′s The Next Logical Progression.  Although, most probably won’t consider it his best effort, Gab puts together a very respectable collection of tracks and once again shows why he’s one of the most highly respected MCs in the game.

Gab comes out of the gate guns blazing, using the first track as a sort of pre-introduction, just to make sure the listener remembers that he has inhuman breath control and lyrics for days.  Unfortunately, we also have to chalk Gift of Gab up as another in the long line of older MCs who take exception to the current state of hip-hop.  It’s become a go-to topic over the past few years; frankly it’s getting a little tiring.  Let’s be honest; if you’re listening to a Gift of Gab solo album, you probably aren’t a big fan of mainstream hip-hop to begin with, there’s no need to harp on the topic anymore.  In general, The Next Logical Progression is a very positive album, filled with feel good choruses and inspirational lyrics.  The running theme of the album is a general appreciation of life.  Although, the story didn’t break until well after recording for this album was done, Gab has had some pretty substantial health problems as of late (he’s currently awaiting a kidney transplant and has suffered from Type 1 diabetes for years), and they’ve clearly given him a new perspective on life.  Some of the narrative tracks border on corny, in “Effed Up,” for example, in a twist that nobody won’t see coming,  the girl who scorned him gets her comeuppance when Gab sees her penniless on the street. (spoiler alert?)

Fellow Oaklander, G-Koop handled the production on The Next Logical Progression, and he took it in a different direction than Gab’s previous albums.  The spacey effects are gone as are many of the soul samples.  Unlike 4th Dimensional Rocketships and Escape 2 Mars, The Next Logical Progression is more thematic than conceptual, as such, the beats had to return to Earth, so to speak.  While not particularly intricate, the beats are extremely catchy and could go a long ways towards extending Gab’s fan base.  Most of the beats feature live instrumentals, which is always refreshing in hip-hop.  There might be more piano looping than I’ve heard in a hip-hop album.  Supposedly, Gab came up with many of the beats himself; humming bass lines into a tape recorder and giving them to Koop to turn into recordable beats.  Overall, the productions fits the theme of the album very well.  None of the beats are ever going to be remembered as classics, but they provide a suitable backdrop for Gab’s rhymes.  Nobody listens to a Gift of Gab project for the production, anyway.

I know, it sounds like I’m being really heavy with my criticisms of The Next Logical Progression, but that’s because I’m comparing it to one of the best bodies of work in hip-hop.  This is, in all reality, a very good album that is definitely worth at least a spin or two.  If someone were to call Gift of Gab the most technically skilled rapper ever, I wouldn’t argue with them, and those skills are on full display here.  Ultimately, The Next Logical Progression will go down as an album that, while technically outstanding, was thematically flawed.  It was certainly a step in a new direction for Gift of Gab, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a progression.

Best Tracks: NLP, Rise, Protocol, Toxic, Market & 8th

Overall: 85/100

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

Atomic Farmhouse - Fortune Cookie LP (2012)

One of the members of Atomic Farmhouse described this tape to me as “Nas’s Illmatic, Notorious B.I.G’s Ready To Die, and Wu Tang Clan’s Enter the 36 Chambers running a train on MF Doom’s Operation Doomsday.”  I agreed to review this, assuming it would be another wack indie tape (I’ve had a few acts ask for reviews)and I’d be able to rip it to pieces as punishment for being so brash.  Turns out, in a pleasant surprise, that wasn’t the case.

While it’s not going to shake the foundations of hip-hop, by any means, The Fortune Cookie LP is a couple levels above what you would expect from the debut (as far as I can tell) of an unknown indie act.  The beats and general production is minimalistic, but serviceable.  It never “wow’s” the listener, but aside from a few annoying effects here and there, makes listening an easy experience.  I really enjoyed the use of vocal samples, such as at the end of “Rat Poison” and in “English Muffin.”

Braggadocio seems to be where the MCs of Atomic Farmhouse are most comfortable, specifically rubbing the fact that they have an LP in the faces of their doubters.  The attempts at deeper subject matter feel somewhat lackluster.  The lyrics don’t see a real drop off, but all of the MCs, other than MAD SYNTST, seem to have trouble flowing over the slower beats that tend to be associated with deeper songs.  ANTI, who is easily the standout MC on the faster tracks, suddenly sounds very amateurish when put over a slow beat, such as on “Nyquil” or “English Muffin.”

All in all, The Fortune Cookie LP is definitely worth a spin.  It’s a little rough around the edges at times, but it’s an independently released, debut LP, from what sounds to be a group of friends fresh out of high-school.  They have all the time in the world to hone their skills and grow as a group.  I think they have a lot of potential.  They’re definitely a group to watch for in the future.

So, does it stand up to Illmatic, Ready to Die, 36 Chambers and Operation: DOOMsday?  Of course not, but few do.  Stylistically, it isn’t even really similar to any of them, either (more like a CYNE-Lupe Fiasco hybrid) Is it a respectable effort, regardless?  Absolutely.

Also, the cover art is GOAT.

Best Tracks: Garage Sale, Dayquil, Public Massacre

Overall: 76/100