Friday, March 23, 2007

CD Review: Blackalicious, "The Craft"

Albmu Cover ImageI'm going to try to post reviews on a semi-regular basis for CDs that I buy and either liked or was particularly dissapointed by. Hopefully this will be providing a service to my friends and enemies,  and hopefully I can keep it up. I do try to by a few CDs a month, so given enough time I could actually do a good job. I'll try to keep the reviews short and helpful. Here we go!

Blackalicious, "The Craft" - 5/5
Blackalicious is a hip-hop group that I have been aware of for probably like 5 or 6 years, but never actually heard. They even played here on campus last semester, but I didn't go. It wasn't until I tapped into the iTunes share of some nice CMU student that I was able to hear them for the first time, and it blew me away. "The Craft" is smart, fast, fun hip-hop. Smart hip-hop can basically be defined as its own sub-genre and to me is hip-hop where the primary theme is not money or women. Good examples are Dead Prez, the Roots, Nas, Outkast (for the most part), Tribe Called Quest, etc. And it's fast, cause these guys have serious flow. If there's one thing I hate, it's jilted, slow rhymes, and I think this is one thing that popular hip-hop is full of. Anyway, I highly recommend this album if you're into hip-hop at all. The album starts out exceptionally strong, and most of my favorite tracks are at the beginning of the CD:
  • World of Vibrations
  • Rhythm Sticks
  • Powers - Awesome dance-y type of song.
  • My Pen and Pad - These guys rap at a ridiculous pace in this song...
  • Side to Side - Hilarious. My favorite song on the CD. "She didn't have a clue. Tell you what to do, just shut and ride the groove!"
are all fantastic. Other songs are good, but I will admit that things slow down a bit towards the end of the end of the CD. It's all quality though, and I recommend you pick it up!

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