Anticipating his third studio album, it's a taster of his third LP, which will be released the following year. Oh, look. The cover already tells us everything, it's fantastic. Then, on the left, right in front of us, we have Statik Selektah, The Man, Patrick Baril himself, 1982 from Lawrence, Essex County, Massachusetts.
Look how he's discharged, do you see him? He's saying, "yeah uncle, it's me. I'm back. I'm still the best, I'm not just the best, I'm so much the best by far that DJ Premier, the one who was the best before me, that he puts my albums in the top five places on his year-end lists without me even paying for it, and if a Legend like Preemo says that I am the best who are you to contradict him?!" I'm even bored by my talent, my technical supremacy and the obvious inferiority of all those poor children who try to imitate my albums." Look at the new era that points to the future, the T's of his name that have a stylish circle that turns to the right and then back to the center, behind the DJ is the blurred background. The cover also tells us that the record is produced by a joint between the Statik label ShowOff Records and the Boston independent label Brick Records. Last, but not least, in yellow, in evidence, are the names of the participants in this effort, including the usual friends of Statik (Termanology, Reks, JFK), then Talib Kweli, Joe Scudda, Sha Stimuli, Bahamadia, Novel and Skyzoo, and a series of ridiculous names of strangers you've never heard and will never hear again.
The tape is opened by "The Best": Reks, Term and JFK reunite with Kali on a light jazzy boom bap, the track is average despite the commitment of the Statik crew; Reks starts well, but doesn't hit, Term is the closest to killing the track with a quick delivery, then JFK delivers weakly with a sluggish flow and closes Kali with an intricate flow. The second track features Skyzoo forced to lift a track that still features JFK – dull, weak and limp as before – and Sha Stimuli on the reggae hook; Skyzoo has a better verse and more energy than the previous ones. A posse with Diz Gibran, Joe Scudda and Truck North follows: dark and mediocre boom bap, with looped sample soul, Joe Scudda's almost unwilling, insufficient, the other two don't even get noticed in this poor track. The quality of the tape doesn't improve with the NYG'z solo on a hardcore boom bap, however, it finally stands up with the arrival of Talib Kweli in "I'm Wit It": great boom bap powerful and cheerful, Talib kills the song, Cory Mo is there too, with a decent non-essential contribution. Immediately after saying goodbye to Black Star MC, the tape collapses: Bahamadia (affiliated with Gang Starr, and former Army of the Pharaohs) has her own solo on an alternative boom bap and reggae-sque style delivery, so there an interlude made of soul samples and excerpts from journalistic reports on MJ, and the eighth joint is a Caribbean boom bap that goes practically unnoticed thanks to the off delivery of Jon Hope and Novel, flow that stops between the boring and the banal and the beat by itself doesn't help. The project is closed by "The Facts of Life", decent jazzy boom bap that isn't wasted by rapper FT, he delivers raw energetic and determined and attempts to save the whole EP by committing to both the verses and the hook.
Obviously Talib here is easily the best, ahead of FT and Skyzoo, perhaps also Term, a bit too few in a project of nine tracks, sixteen guests and twenty-five minutes: we could define this EP as an "experimental work" by Statik, almost amateurish, but it's a somewhat curious slip, given the premises – he arrives hailed as one of the best emerging beatmakers, included in several end-of-year lists by insiders – and is difficult to save it, sunk by mediocre, bad songs and dubious-taste fillers. Not recommended, 5/10.
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