The album number eleven is one of the weakest ever in the discography of KRS-One, one of the best MCs of the golden age, between the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. Originally, there are no production credits, but they pop up on discogs: the beats are provided by Enoch, Adam Deitch, Chris Max Pinset, Adam Smirnoff, Nick Kasper, Duane "Da Rock" Ramos, Robert Hernandez, James Desmond, Panauh Kalayeh, Bam Beats, MIC, KDL, Alex Track, Stevie J of the Hitmen, QF, Lounge Lizzards and KRS. Excluding this last one and the guy from Puffy's production team, I've never heard of any of them. Guests are some of the best ever such as MC Lyte, Rakim, Chuck D, Nas, as well as Just Blaze and names of strangers such as Keith Stewart, Pee-Doe, S-Five, Carlet Boseman, Non-Stop and Vince Flores.
Looking at the tracklist alone, the production might leave something to be desired and it doesn't matter, because some of the guests are phenomena. And this is where the album really disappoints and reveals itself in front of listeners as the great joke that it really is: Rakim, Chuck D, MC Lyte and Nas appear on four different tracks, and they're all talking. MC Lyte intervenes three times, in spoken word. Esco says that Lawrence Parker is the greatest MC ever and the others are featured in two consecutive intros. In "The Real Hiphop", there's a guest verse, and it's performed by S-Five, uncredited. There are seventeen other tracks, they're not good, KRS continues to preach with a generic flow and is accompanied by some amateur and casual interpreters, on a minimal production that is profoundly latent in intensity. The best rhythm seems to be that of "The Teacha Returns", created by Bam Beatz.
The album comes on the heels of a collaboration with Marley Marl which brought it back to the desired attention of the national mainstream hip-hop scene, and KRS desperately tries to maintain that attention in all ways over the course of an hour, without succeeding: rapping is scarce, production should be East Coast vintage while it sounds like a tribute to the latest and most scandalous southern beats, and his attempts to research the banger lead him to the creation of the final song, a badly-done rap metal track. 2/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment