KRS-One & Marley Marl — Hip Hop Lives

When "Hip Hop Is Dead" comes out, Nas turns on the torch again and provokes reactions throughout the Hip Hop Nation. Among others, Lawrence "KRS-One" Parker decides to respond to this declaration, while his career is in decline and he's losing the attention of audiences and critics year after year. Kris wasn't expecting anything better in order to regain the attention he deserves, after the dissing with rnb singer Nelly, which ended in a few months. After over 20 years, KRS-One and Marley Marl decide to squash their beef and put an end to the Bridge Wars with this collaborative record. The LP boasts the presence of Magic Juan, Red Alert, Blaq Poet (secondary protagonist of the Bridge Wars) and Busy Bee Starski aka Chief Rocker Busy Bee. DJ Premier provides the scratches on "The Victory" and 88 Fingers co-produces "All Skool".

The album isn't the comeback it promises to be. KRS seems to have lost his lyrical skills, his lyrics are uninspired, his bars are elementary, he claims he was one of the pioneers and keeps saying that hip-hop is still alive. The rapper brags for an hour about what he has been and not what he is now, unwittingly arguing with Nas about the status of hip-hop today. Marley Marl hasn't entirely produced an album other than his own since 1991: every now and then he guesses an accessible and fresh rhythm, often his solution behind the keyboards isn't good and the rap sounds less good than it should, the beats are subdued. In any case, the album finds some of its best results when KRS returns to face Bridge Wars ("Rising to the Top", "The Victory"), when its delivery style goes along with the production of Marl.

Released by Koch Records, the album reaches several charts, including the top ten in rap records, becoming the best chart result in Marley Marl's career and KRS' best since "Sneak Attack". Composed of 14 songs and about 48 minutes of listening, the disc is lukewarmly received by most professional critics, who appreciate more the thought of the collaboration between two veterans once rival than the musical content offered, and it's largely ignored by fans, who don't care about the project of two artists who contributed to the promotion and diffusion of hip-hop during the eighties. Ultimately, it presents nothing interesting or memorable, almost all of the tracks are average and overall, the project disappoints. 5.5/10.