Fade
The Beat Strangler
Administrator
illest o.g.
The album starts off really grimy and hard and never backs down for a single minute. This is an album composed by 2/3 gritty beats and 1/3 uncompromising rap. Shake and you have a nice club album.
The tracks have both upsides and downsides. The downside is the sound of it. It sounds a bit one dimensional sound-wise. The beats aren't all that well mixed, the bottom register especially. It feels too flat.
The beats are the main problem I think, besides the lack of a properly balanced soundscape the beats are too simplistic and repetitive. They start up and keep the same loop all the way through with just minor changes. I'd like to hear more versatility to the beats because they are good and well composed. They are nice beats but it gets really uninteresting after 3 minutes of grinding on the same loop. Another problem as I see it is the overall big picture. The rap just doesn't feel knitted in with the beats particularly well. It feels like two separate units that never intertwine. I warrant a better mix and/or compressors to fuse it all to one solid soundscape, and most of all, the sound of the rap ain't all that good. A better mic, preamp and AD converter is really needed. And it's a bit sad, because the rap is nice, but the bigger picture gets a bit distorted by the sound of the mic. Literally!
On the upside, as I said, I think the beats are good. The flow is nice though a bit unorganized at times. The whole album has a nice red thread through all the tracks, it really feels like one solid album. There are some solid gems that really are nice. Track 9 "It's All right (feat. Malaka)" on its own really makes it worth to get this album. The bass is a bit flat and sticks out a bit too much but man, the feeling. Shit! This is good! A wonderfully emotional rap over a really great guitar beat, and the chorus is of the hook with a real smooth soft flow and children singing.
My grade on this album would be 3 out of 5. The badly balanced soundscape and poor mic just takes the overall feeling down a notch or two. But the skill and craft is clearly visible and this is an album well worth a bit of attention. And WHEN you get this album. Don't sleep on track no 9.