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

Kno - Death is Silent (2010)

The concern with concept albums is whether the artist decides to take a literal or abstract approach.  Death Is Silent’s concept adheres to the former.  Intensely.  It’s obvious from the mere title of the album that death and dying and all that depressing stuff will be the order.  Whether Kno thinks little of his fan’s deciphering skills, or he himself is lacking the intelligence to compile an album that challenges the listener to discover the concept on their own, is definitely up for discussion.

Kno has a beautiful ability to construct a dope backdrop.  His well-known use of obscure samples and talent with layering strings on synths on drums is unquestionable.  But this is not an instrumental album. What could have been a near perfect collection of songs is let down by his straight up average presence on the mic and frown-inducing delivery.

He is vocally outdone on almost every track that has a guest.  Examples of Kno being owned completely include Natti’s dominance on “If You Cry”, Nemo Achida’s incredible storytelling on “Loneliness” and Tonedeff’s stunning first verse effort on “I Wish I Was Dead”, easily a contender for verse of the album.  Kno’s best verses comes from the tracks “They Told Me”, where he divulges his private anxieties in plain sight and “La Petite Mort (Come Die With Me)”, a cleverly veiled ode to sex that will take a few listens and perhaps some experience in the subject to unravel.  It’s one thing to be a talented lyricist.  Which he is.  But his sappy and frail delivery wrecks the elegance of his lyrics.

Despite Kno’s tendency to say corny things, what makes this album an excellent addition to your music collection, is his capacity to create honest stories over magical beats.  Atmospheric is a word that is more and more being incorrectly used to describe crowded production, but here it totally belongs.  This has atmosphere in spades.  The production is by far the standout element and it’s Kno who is solely responsible for it.

So do his cheesy verses get a pass because he is a ‘part-time’ MC?  Well, no.  He has shown some great propensity for spitting on the CunninLynguist albums.  Maybe he was so caught up in the producing side of the album and neglected the vocal aspect?  Perhaps.  What’s obvious is if this was, say, a Tonedeff album, with the same concept and production, it would have been universally accepted as a top 3 album of 2010.  It’s a frustrating album, so agonizing close to perfection but missing the most important part of any hip hop record; top notch MC skills.

Highs:  Production on ALL tracks is amazing.  The concept runs nicely throughout, and while it is a gloomy concept, it never feels unbearably heavy and tiresome; in fact, it’s a highly energetic album from start to finish.

Lows:  Not enough Tonedeff.

87/100

Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (2010)

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  In hip hop, words are often flipped, skewed and spun to mean different things.  And so it applies to this quote.  In terms of hip hop groups, the parts are often greater than the sum.  Lauren Hill is more than The Fugees, Cee-Lo is more than Goodie Mob and Scarface is more than Geto Boys.  But does it apply to Big Boi and OutKast with Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty?  Yes.

To say it was a rocky road for Big Boi to get the album out is a huge understatement.  Label problems that would give AZ nightmares ensued, and he was forced to approach Def Jam for distribution.  Fast forward to July 2010 and the album finally sees the light of day, taking over 3 years and a label jump to get there.  So what did we get?

Production is a mish mash of live instruments, vocal manipulators, a good amount of quality singing and interesting samples.  Running under all of that are strong bass lines, frenzied drum patterns and pure energy.  Big Boi gets help from some big names alongside the ever present Organized Noize crew, with Salaam Remi, Scott Storch and Lil Jon amongst others, on the boards.  This album never lets up, there’s no chance to pause, no gap in the line to take a breath, just 14 tracks that come at you over and over, forcing you to keep up or get run over.

Big Boi’s prowess on the mic is absolute and even with a large roster of guest rappers, he is never out-rapped.  He brings the laughs all over the album and manages to relay his funny antics without coming off far-fetched or corny.  You never feel the need to say “Boy, stop!” because he’s genuinely an entertaining MC.  That’s his main strength, incredibly likeable and always spirited.

A couple of issues.  The album is so upbeat, so animated, that you have no arc from intro to end.  It plateaus from start to finish, there’s no build up, no cool down and no ebb and flow in between.  You may find yourself saying ‘more of the same’ about the tracks, thanks to the near identical tempo of nearly every song.  This album only has one speed and it’s 6th gear fast, shifting down only once or twice before taking off again.

Another problem, which has no real bearing on Big Boi, is the exclusion of the songs “Lookin’ for Ya” and “Royal Flush” from the official release.  With guest verses from Andre 3000 and Raekwon, they not only fit right in with the other tracks but would have served to enhance the album tenfold.  The reason they were left off is a business one but that’s really not worth talking about, since both songs were leaked by Big Boi himself and are easily available online.  I suggest you add them to your digital copy of this album manually, in a sort of middle finger gesture to the spiteful record label.

Highs:  General Patton, Shutterbugg, Daddy Fat Sax, Shine Blockas, some of the most hilarious skits on any album and the general sense of fun and joy the album gives.

Lows:  The singing on Follow Us can be irritating.  Yelawolf’s verse on You Ain’t No DJ.  More of Big Boi or the gut-busting end skit and Yelawolf completely scrapped would’ve been great.

89/100

OuKast - ATLiens (1996)

This is the first of LuxDel's reviews that she wrote for the old blog, her personal favorite album, Outkast's classic 1996 effort, ATLiens.

Album intros are all at once meant to convey texture, direction and hint at what is to come.  It’s the first hit and it must be taken quickly.  With ATLiens, OutKast’s second offering, the first step is more of a face first fall into a warm abyss. You almost don’t want to escape. Neither Andre 3000 nor Big Boi make an appearance, and it’s left up to a hypnotic rendition of a well known children’s prayer in a cryptic language and a melancholic ballad about (maybe) dying, to usher in listeners to this 14 song lesson in Atlantan space invaders.

After the ’77 Seville vibe of “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik”, ATLiens at once manages to turn a sharp corner without falling over.  Production from Organized Noize and Earthtone Ideas ricochets from the riff driven “Wailin’” to the reverb heavy “E.T. (Extraterrestrial)” then returns to a synth fiends’s paradise on “Wheelz of Steel.”  Bass heads are serviced by the insistent beat of “Elevators (Me & You)”  and the title track’s menacing mix of live bass strings and sampled drums.

Running throughout the entire album is OutKast’s ability to craft a beautiful melody.  This is their second strongest asset and is never more evident than on “Jazzy Belle”, a blunt analysis of the opposite sex that contradicts the softness of the beat.  “Decatur Psalm” and “Ova Da Wudz” have disappointing construction, but the MC skills of the duo and Dungeon Family guests make the songs enjoyable, even without a dynamic beat to hold the verses.

It’s puzzling how often Big Boi is dismissed as ‘the ugly twin’ while he’s standing next to Andre.  Big Boi is an upper echelon MC.  He holds up the end of “Mainstream” beautifully, his storytelling on “Babylon” is engaging and he rips the title track into pieces, easily outshining Andre.  Mr. Benjamin delivers, putting his all into each verse.  He’s in blackout mode on “Elevators (Me & You)”, at his most scathing on “Mainstream” and totally candid in the anti-braggadocio “Millennium.”

The last true track of the album, “13th Floor/Growing Old”, is a soft landing.  Both Big Boi and Andre reflect and speculate, and the tender piano laced beat is deceptive considering the content of their lyrics are hard hitting truths that are still fully relevant over 15 years after conception.

Topped off with some trippy artwork, it’s an album that’s received critical acclaim ad nauseam.  It constantly battles with “Aquemini” for the title of OutKast’s best and is undoubtedly a bona fide classic, coming from a year that saw the hip hop genre gain at least a dozen other classics.  It’s thoroughly southern and holds down the ‘timeless’ label easily. If you’re looking for something that knocks the speakers and sparks the thoughts, cop this.

Highs:  Elevators, 13th Floor/Growing Old, production on Wheelz of Steel and Two Dope Boyz.  Andre’s verses on Millennium and Mainstream.  Big Boi’s verses on ATLiens, Ova Da Wudz and E.T.

Lows:  Average production on Decatur Psalm and Ova Da Wudz.  The bizarre and annoying vocal sample on Wailin’.  Organized Noize’s take on Elevators with their ONP 86 mix is an unnecessary addition to the album.

94/100

More Contributors!

One of the contributors from my previous blog has decided to allow me to bring her reviews over to the new address, so I will now be featuring reviews from, not only myself, but the one and only LuxDel, as well.