October 2009: The "Real"ness

Numerous shitty and a few good projects came out this month, so let's get right into it.

This album hardly contains street tracks, club bangers or stoner tunes, but what it DOES display is a capable artist with some taste in beats. This isn't for the casual listener, but for "real" heads it's worth the listen. There's nothing particularly bad on here and the good stuff will get at least 3-4 repeats before I decide to give that KRS-Buck album another shot.

Listen to Seperation, Time, Secrets, Perspective and Love then make your decision, or burn it and if you enjoy it buy it, if not, send it to the recycle bin.

I was more interested in this due to the inclusion of Tame than Del, I mean yeah, the Hieroglyphics Crew made some decent records but Tame's track record with the collabs and as a member of Artifacts speaks for itself (Leak Bros. Waterworld is my Tetris soundtrack), not to mention the cover art is the TITS. I'm glad to see I was only SLIGHTLY disappointed. The production is as good as you're going to get as far as Indie hip hop goes and aside from the artists feeling the need to spend the first minute of half the tracks chattering before they started rapping I'm fairly satisfied with the finished project, not that I should be, Del and Tame made a point to tell critics like myself to fuck right off, thanks guys.

I can only recommend you pick this up when it drops.

I'm surprising myself with this. Tech N9ne has always reminded me of a SLIGHTLY less skilled Busta Rhymes; his beat choices have always been a bit suspect but catchy nonetheless and he's always made the effort to prove his lyricism, even if most of the guest spot slots are filled with bull shit. K.O.D. at 23 tracks is, as you could only expect, is filled with filler, but there's enough good stuff on here that you'll learn to live with it.

Enough people will buy this so what you do won't make a difference, I recommend you burn it and if you like what you hear and feel Tech deserves the cash, give it a purchase, you won't have a hard time finding it.

My Soul To Keep is a prime example that you CAN release a good hip hop album in 2009. Of course there's shitty tracks on here, and like 99% of rappers the man should just opt to skip hooks altogether, but unlike 90% of Indie rappers the man picked production that compliments his deep introspective lyrics, as a result he crafted a top album that has enough bangers on here that this has cemented itself a good few months in my iPod.

If you don't trust me enough to buy this then listen to Move Back, What's Wrong With That, Bucket List and Follow The Leader and see what you think.