First collaborative album between LA rapper Murs (Living Legends) and Winston-Salem producer 9th Wonder (Little Brother), consisting of eight cuts plus two interludes for a total of thirty-five minutes of listening: many reviewers have pointed to the reduced playing time as a weak point of the project, when it's instead one of the strengths of the album, along with the quality lo-fi production provided by 9th Wonder.
Murs's lyricism comes to touch different topics, but focuses mainly on girls, drops some socio-conscious bars and frequently wraps himself in the braggadocio, often managing to come out with funny, playful and sometimes raw lines, performing his lyrics with a technically elementary rapping style, and with a crisp, smooth flow: easy to write now in retrospect, but the reduced time limits the probable risk of excessive repetition by the MC, maintaining a solidity that was compromised by Murs' overly accentuated misogyny and holding the listener a little more concentrated.
The production of 9th Wonder is excellent: bare boom bap, jazzy music samples and seventies soul melodic samples. The producer simply offers one of his best productions of his career, missing only one beat out of ten ("H-U-S-T-L-E", the beat is slightly below all the others; then remixed with John Cena among the other guests) and creating a smooth, crisp, clean and completely fit soundscape for the rapping of Murs.
Not even the guests Phonte and Joe Scudda (both members of the Justus League) are a problem: it could have been a classic record, if you stop at the first listen without paying too much attention, you might also think that it's a classic and that everyone, absolutely everyone, have slept on it. It comes close, 9th Wonder launches some of his best rhythms ("The Pain", "Walk Like a Man", "And This Is For...", "The Animal"), but sometimes Murs doesn't fully exploit them or simply wastes them ("Freak These Tales"), moreover the mixing is a bit neglected.
Overall, the album is dope, recommended and unmissable, certainly one of the best hip-hop records of the year and one of the best ever released by El-P's Definitive Jux.
Rating: 8.5/10.
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