Elcamino — Block Work

Ninth studio album for Elcamino, personal, with a minimal cover that recalls the past.

"Avenue Thug" has an energetic boom bap, with powerful drum pounding, gloomy piano samples, and Elcamino's slow flowing delivery. It follows "Food Stamps", jazzy boom bap with slow light pounding drum, ethereal melodic female soulful sample in the background, Elcamino would like to sing, you can hear it, but he's almost forced to deliver in rapping, lazy, slow. The third song features a light rhythm with good samples and distant, slow, pounding and light drum machine, to support the rapper's slow and lazy delivery. A skit follows, then comes track number five: beautiful sample, wonderful strings, no drum, then Elcamino offers some of the laziest doot-doot-doot-doot adlibs you can hear in Griselda.

I still haven't figured out if it's a tribute or a parody. He spits bars with a forgettable, energy-free style. "Driveway Music" has a jazzy midtempo boom bap with good hard thumping drum and string samples, however, the rapper still delivers lazy and listless. He doesn't change his style in choice number seven, on a good jazzy rhythm, with hard and pounding midtempo drum and good samples of strings, offering a slow rapping almost spoken and chanted. A guitar riff turns on "King Talk", jazzy beats, slow and tight drum, tight female soul sample, bars slowly spat out by the rapper. After nine pieces, the boy still hasn't found the urge to rap, over a simple beat, hard slow pounding drum machine and decent samples. He closes the tape with the choice number ten: male melodic sample, light pounding drum, and the usual rapping by Elcamino.

Like most modern albums, this one resembles a long EP, 10 short songs totaling around 21 minutes. It's a personal record, without guests, but at the same time, it's one of his most disappointing projects: every day he gets closer and closer to soft rap, it's simply absurd. Before the release of this record, it seems that Elcamino underwent a Ludovico technique treatment, and repressed his natural desire to sing and speak slowly: the treatment here seems to have partially worked and the Buffalo MC proves to take steps in the right direction and return to the boom bap / hardcore sound that characterized his best projects, however, his rapping is again lazy and weak, limp and slow, completely without desire. He wastes a laudable production with a style of delivery that simply hasn't arrived: for more than a year, he has been the most out of shape artist among the Buffalo rappers, this may be the first step to return to be one of the most anticipated performers in the circuit.

Rating: 6.5/10.