I’ve heard so many good things about this group, but have not heard them before, so I was fizzing with excitement as I pressed the play button, and as I proceeded through the album, I understand why they’ve had so much acclaim.
They’re a perfect media pleaser, they’re talented, slick, intelligent and generally unoffencive. They’re like the Outcasts but with clean clothes on.
Generally described as old school, they do present the very basic structures that were evident in the origins of hip-hop, but Ugly Duckling present a more polished version of old school hip-hop, learning from the mistakes of their forefathers and smoothing over all the cracks that were left as rap advanced. The main difference between this album and the music it emulates is that the originals were ground breaking, which is why there were all those cracks and Ugly Duckling have smoothed over those cracks and failed to create anything earth-shattering.
If you like your rap political, angry, menacing or exciting then this album is not for you. If you like your rap with clean edges, soft beats and a sine wave of scratching, then you will get a lot of pleasure from this album.
I personally really enjoy this album, but feel that it would take some work on my part to get this into my regular listening routine.
Some people try and distance themselves from the origins or a genre. Others try and modify these origins for a new audience, developing their discipline to keep it original and continue to impress.
EPMD do neither and continue doing the same things that they, and all hip-hop artists have been doing since the 80s.
It’ s always nice to listen to something old school, but there’s plenty of things out there that will cater to those urges, note: the things that were produced in the 80s.
It’s not as though they’ve even tried to make anything even slightly original and even the guest artists, some of which have done some very interesting and original things in their time are sucked into this vortex and dumped back in the era, 1987-1992. It’s like an American hip-hop version of ‘Life on Mars’.
When you can predict 90% of the rhymes that they use before you hear them, there’s something wrong, especially when one of these is ‘element’ and ‘elephant’, it forces my head to make hard contact with the desk.
All in all, this album is a disappointment. Artists who are prestigious and have been at the forefront of their scenes, just failing to do anything worth writing about.
On the making of the album, Common said “I created this music for the summer time, it’s about feeling good… this is the type of music I felt was missing from my body of work.”
Which is why he released it in December!
This album, being the first one I’ve reviewed in ages, is like a horse with a broken leg. It’s struggling to move and it’s dragging it’s nearly dead body through the mud, but you know that it’s going to have to go to the glue factory sooner or later.
This album is like turning up to an empty playground, on your own, in winter. There’s a promise of something fun and nice and exciting, but after 5 minutes of sitting around, maybe going on the swings by yourself, you get incredibly bored and just want to go home, get drunk and shout at the T.V.
There are songs that sound, in the first 4-5 seconds to be kind of entertaining with interesting beats and cool rhythms, but once you hit the 10 second mark, you realize that it’s actually not very good and there ensues the kind of tedium that is usually reserved for maths lessons.
Tedious is probably the best way to describe this album. I may have found a new cure for insomnia.
It’s a shame because I seem to remember Common being pretty cool in the past, but maybe I’m thinking of someone else.
Once I struggle to the end of each song, the next one starts and instantly I recognize the promise of the new song, and again, very quickly, the boredom sets in once more.
Listen to this album: After you’ve brushed your teeth, as you may fall asleep.
Knowing nothing of this band, I turn it on, expecting something very bland and stale, I would have heard of them if they were any good, right?
They’re amazing. The best band I’ve never heard of until 5 minutes ago. The depth of hip-hop, rock guitars, reggae influences and rhythm and blues all working together really works well for me.
It’s like a party in my ears and everyone’s invited. The fun that happens on the record is just one those things that cause you to have fun. Even though I’m tired and my head hurts a but, I’m dancing around in my seat. I would love to find a live recording of this band, as I imagine that they would be a lot of fun. They resemble Black Eyed Peas in that respect and the music, in places, reminds me of the BEP.
The combinations of styles on this record are quite amazing, because they do all of them so well. They have pop-punk on ‘Live a little’ they have hip hop on ‘Don’t tell me it’s over’ and reggae on ‘Blinded by the sun’ among others on others.
The underlying theme on all of the songs is dancy rap.
There really isn’t much more to say, other than listen to this album and I’m quite sure that if you have any kind of interest in happy hip-hop then you will very happy with this album. It will take you to a nice restaurant, offer to pay for your meal (including desert) and walk you home without trying to take advantage once it gets you there. A real gentleman of an album, with a cheeky smile and a glint in his eye.
Listen to this album: With a group of people, watch everyone start dancing.
89%
Extract from ‘Guilty as charged’, ‘Blinded by the sun’, ‘Live a little’ and ‘Don’t tell me it’s over’
I’ve not really paid much attention to The Streets since Original Pirate Material and so when I’m told that this album is more like the music we heard on that album, I really just have to take their word for it.
Whenever I listen to The Streets in the background and don’t really listen to it, I feel that I’ve missed out on the stories in the songs. The music itself is the same minimalistic style that I associate with The Streets, and it’s quite pleasurable. Some of the slower and minimalist songs end up being a bit long and start to get dull by the end of the song and I find myself wanting to skip these tracks after 2/3 of the track. The slower ones that have a more full composition are a lot more interesting. Take ‘The Edge of a Cliff’ for example, it has some really nice harmonies and is filled to the brim with different instruments and singing and thus it’s very exciting, I even let out a little ‘woop’ of joy in the middle of the song.The most annoying songs on the album are the ones that need more words than it’s given and Mike Skinner is rapping slower, so that he can fit the small number of words in a big space. ‘Never give in’ is prime suspect for this crime and I’m like “SAY MORE WORDS!!”
The faster songs are really good, and hold the top spot on my ‘The Streets – Everything is Borrowed chart of good songs’, ‘The way of the dodo’ taking the #1 spot.
I’m sometimes a bit mixed up by The Streets. Sometimes the sentement seems a bit forced, like I’m being told that I MUST feel an emotion because of the song. I don’t like this.
‘The strongest person I know’ is one of these songs that puts a sentement snooker ball in a sock and hits me on the back of the head with it. Emotion in songs, sometimes, needs to be like the smell of nice food, where it entices you in and you follow it and find the tasty treat one you search a bit, not a pie in the face.
Overall, the noises coming out of my speakers are quite pleasurable, but it’s a little bit long in the tooth.
Listen to this album: While rocking backwards and forwards
70%
Extracts from ‘The way of the dodo’, ‘On the edge of a cliff’, ‘Never give in’ and ‘The strongest person I know’
You can tell by listening to this album that it would be so much better if you were experiencing it live. It has an energy and entertainment potentiality that is mainly lost on the recording.
I really fell like I’m missing out while I’m listening to the album, not to say that it isn’t a really fantastic album, but the feeling that I’m not getting everything I can, from a band that I know is great, leaves me feeling cheated. I don;t remember their previous albums having this same sense of live expectancy, and maybe it’s because they were more complete albums and this has something missing, or what.
I do feel myself wanting to dance while waiting for my train, while I listen to this album. The beats are really good, the lyrics are not the most profound of intellegent, but it’s all filled wiith fun, and you can tell that NERD really wanted to do this, and loved every minute of it.
The bass is heavy, the drums are big and the energy is fantastic. Go see them live and tell me if they are better live.
Listen to this album: While they perform it live.
Rating: 84%
Extracts from ‘Anti-Matter’, ‘Spaz’. ‘Kill Joy’ and ‘You know what’
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To begin with, the first track comes on and floods me with horrible repetition, bland beats and boring lyrics. Good start, I’m beginning to dread the next 78:17 of this Forever edition of the album. I think it’s called Forever, because that’s how long this album is feels like it takes to finish.
The rest of the album, I can see what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to make R&B less rubbish, by adding some of the more fashionable styles in hip-hop to his music, There’s flavours of every rap, hip-hop and R&B style in there all at once and it just sounds terrible.
It just sounds messy, like they’ve really tried too hard and the strain of doing the album made them really ill, but instead of taking time off, they rushed through it so that they could go to bed.
I really feel physically uncomfortable listening to this album and I really needed to struggle through it.It really wasn’t worth it
Listen to this album: Laying on marbles, it might make it a more comfrtable experience.
Rating:59%
Extracts from ‘Picture Perfect’, ‘Help Me’, ‘Nice’ and ‘Superhuman’
This album has a strange talent of talking to your brain directly. It does so in sometimes a very funny way and sometimes a very sad and depressing way and it’s this contrast that causes the greatest impact to occur.
Scroobius Pip sounds like some guy down the pub chatting about stuff that just happens to fit to the music that’s playing in the background. The fact that he’s talking to you on a personal level makes the messages he’s trying to convey, seem so much more appropriate.
Some songs take a really weird take on a common theme and turns it around to make it funny and provoking. One of the main ones that does this is ‘Tommy C’ that starts with an intro that they’re about to partake in a song about beauty and the definition of the word and then proceed to talk about the life of Tommy Cooper. This is a very moving song and by the end I’m lying on the floor wailing like a little girl.
There’s a great division between the songs about life and the songs about music. The song ‘Fixed’ is all about the current state of British hip hop and about how he thinks turned into a medium of lows common denominators and the effect this is having on the art form.
The whole album is very well written, and the music is really good as well.
Listen to this album: While combating stupidity in art.
Rating: 89%
Extracts from ‘Development’, ‘Tommy C’, ‘Fixed’ and ‘Waiting for the beat to kick in’
Because she’s not and it’s quite embarrassing to see her trying to be cool and failing. It’s like when your mum tries to take an interest in pop music, or your dad trying to dance at a wedding. You just cringe and feel a huge amount of embarrassment for them.
Yes, she used to be shocking and abrasive, but we’ve seen it all now and there’s nothing left for her to do but shut up and go away.
She obviously does it because she enjoys it, and I respect that, I just find it hard to believe she actually thinks she does it well.
On this album, she’s just surrounded herself with rap artists and I do believe that the people who will buy this album, will do so, not for her, but for all the other people on the album. Does this make her the winner?
Everything on the album does have a degree of success, plenty of the songs are quite catching and I find myself bopping along to the music, but seeing where Madonna came from it just feels like such a fall from grace.
Listen to this album: While being a mutton dressed as lamb.
Rating: 67%
Extracts from ‘Miles Away’, ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘Incredible’
Atmosphere is in a place in the middle of many different criteria within art. He’s in a soap bubble of vocal skill, word play and poetic licence.
The thing is, I wouldn’t call it poetry, it’s still most definitely rapping, it’s just that it’s filled with poetic devices to help with the narrative contained in the song.
Slug, the rapper in Atmosphere, is one of the most intelligent wordsmiths in music today, some of the political messages are very well thought out and he will even give a balanced argument for and against the subject he’s talking about. I find this completely amazing and many people, not only music but in life too, could learn a lot from him.
This album is pretty much all about the rapping and the lyrics and the music behind it, is more a device for the words, rather than a musical entity within itself. Minimalist, light beats with slight hints of bassy flavour contrast the very technical, complex rhymes and messages within the words. Having very simple, unimposing music really helps you to listen to the words in the songs and really take in everything that’s said and gives you room to think about what’s been said and then form your own opinions about the topics contained within those very witty lyrics.
A lot of the songs are about society and how we as a people react to certain issues. Slug writes in a very personal way, and I find myself relating to him. This drags me further in to the album and causes me to really empathise with him. The song ‘Yesterday’ plays all the way through with the chorus:
“Yesterday, was that you
Looked just like you
Strange things my imagination might do
Take a breath reflect on what we’ve been through
Or am I just going crazy cause I miss you”
It’s only at the end you actually realise who it is that he thought he saw and why he felt it necessary to write about it. I’m not going to spoil it, just go and listen to it. It’s the song in the youtube video at the bottom.
This isn’t really an album that you want to listen to on a regular basis, as it’s not the most musically adept album, not even the most musical Atmosphere album, but it’s still very much worth a listen, especially when you feel a bit sad, so you can feel empowered by your sadness, due to the positive messages that derive from negative situations.
Listen to this album: when you feel a bit sad, so you can feel empowered by your sadness, due to the positive messages that derive from negative situations.
82%
Extracts from ‘Like the rest of us’, ‘Your Glass House’, ‘Wild Wild Horses’ and ‘In Her Music Box’
