O.C. — Smoke and Mirrors

OC relies on the West Coast Hieroglyphics label to drop his second album in 2005. It starts with jazzy ("Intro") and soulful ("You Made Me"), dark ("Martyr") and alternative ("My Way") rhythms, certainly looking for four completely different beats in the first four, more or less average, tracks don't help the album coherence.

It's perhaps the biggest obstacle of this LP, because the production entirely provided by Mike Loe — stunning with some highs — on the first lap works before turning average and lame after a couple of spins. After these four, arrive "Emotions" (soul-light boom bap) and "Distortion" (another amazing digitized beat by Mike Loe, OC realizes a banger with his great delivery).

Then, the album falls in the mediocrity of the soulful seventies sound on R&B hooks left to the looped samples and honest deliveries but nothing more ("Gone"'s perhaps the album's apex in this field). "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" has a good concept, it'd be interesting in theory, but OC doesn't exploit it at its best and delivers three banal verses, half off, half relaxed on this boom bap soul-R&B. "I'm da Boss" is another denial, another refusal, another repudiation aimed at "Time's Up", now dead and broken: in the only track produced by Fyre Dept, OC adopts the mafia boss persona on a rocking background and a gloomy boom bap, the rapper delivers calm, quiet, as if nothing was happening as if he had never written and rapped: "Speaking in tongues about what you did but you never did it / Admit it, you bit it because the next man gained platinum and behind it".

The delivery of OC can hardly be understood in "Challenge Ya'll" (which is pure confused noise) and is forced into the soul of "Brothers Keeper". Shorty's the musical filler, party choice directed at the club, has nothing to do with the rest of the production, the emcee proves that it's able to ride the rhythm and return an acceptable song. "This Is Me" is the last soulful beat, a relaxed one, it's a candidate as the banger cut; it should be noted that the timeless sample used by Mike Loe is taken from "You're Free" by Brenda Russell (1979), the same one used years later by producer Cookin Soul for a sick remix of the single "The Come Up", AZ's banger originally produced by DJ Premier.

Highlights: "Emotions", "Distortion", "This Is Me".

Rating: 6/10.