The albums opens with exactly the kind of hip-hop track the government would use in 1992 to support a public service announcement. Luckily there were no lyrics, but there was a lot of scratching. The second track uses scratching to supply the main riff. If there's a cheese-factor dial Arrested Development turned it way passed 11 even for 1992.
About halfway through song 3 I realize I might just not be cut out to review hip-hop or rap albums. The voices are different, the words are different, but I can't really tell if the songs are actually different, because it's really hard for me to get over all the ways the songs are exactly the same. If it's just supposed to be the words that make them different, I'm never going to hear it because A) they talk too damn fast and B) I don't really give a fuck about lyrics in the first place.
"Mr Wendal" isn't so bad, a kind of cheesy early 90's hip-hop track I can get behind. For one it's not really rapped but sort of sung in a flat manner. For another it's a sweet tribute to an ordinary down-on-his-luck man. I don't usually appreciate this type of song, but it's pleasant to hear a song on a rap album where no one is referred to as a nigga or a bitch. My mood is spoiled by "Children Play With Earth" which is a garbled mess of samples, scratching, really terrible sound quality, and pointless lyrics. It's hard to believe that song is only two and a half minutes long, it feels way longer while listening to it.
Most of the rest of the album moves along at a good clip. It helps that it's generally high energy and the lyrics more lighthearted compared to the gangsta crap I usually hear. I still didn't like it, but at least it wasn't aggressively bad. 2 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment