Kryme Life — The Kryme Wave

Anthony "Kryme Life" Jones was born in Jamaica, Queens, and grew up in Stapleton, Staten Island, from an early age. Rapper of TMF (an acronym that takes on different meanings each time depending on how the sun turns), then a member of the Theodore Unit chaired by Ghostface, finally a solo artist who made his debut in 2007 with his own studio album financed through the independent label Ruffline, created by his uncle Triple OG, main guest, and Dan Bramley, main producer.

Kryme Life is the main rapper and one of the producers of the record, together with him there are relatives and friends. Unlike almost all the projects released by the Wu-Tang affiliates, this features neither collaborations nor beats from guys outside the TMF and the closest thing to a Killa Bee is beatmaker Unspoken who provided a beat to Dom Pachino the year before and is credited here three times.

It's not difficult to understand what Kryme Life has tried to do here, he tries everything, all-in, without having the right cards in hand or the experience to handle such a big situation. For the first twenty minutes, the rapper is hardcore on boom bap rhythms. Alright then. Nothing that catches my eye, but it's not too bad music either. Then the disc suddenly goes where it wants and stretches out tentacles you didn't think it could have: the skit is the prelude to a rap rock track, a rap ballad one, two songs in a row for the club with southern / crunk rhythms, and two other pieces accompanied by soul loops. The whole central part of the disc, from track nine to track fifteen, tries to attract as much audience as possible with some of the more generic rhythms available. The songs in the final section go back to being boom bap and Kryme Life provides some of his best solo tracks.

The bio on discogs, which was written by the rapper himself or someone very close to him, claims that this album allowed him to step out of the underground and rise to prominence. I don't know if you get the irony. Last note, the font of the title, disgraceful, on the cover doesn't play in favor of the appeal of the tape.