Sixth installment in six consecutive years of the "Zion" series, conceived by North Carolina producer 9th Wonder. Singer Heather Victoria takes part in five tracks, local rappers GQ and Reuben Vincenti take part in one track each. The rest of the songs, as per the tradition of the series, are instrumental. Poor instrumental. 9th Wonder collects 59 rhythms recorded between 2001 and 2006, and brings out his worst LP of the series to date, 59 beats for a total of 149 minutes of material, close to two and a half hours. Most of this selection is forgettable and bad.
The album starts off well, with three more than decent rhythms: Heather Victoria has a great voice in the introductory cut, on a boom bap with dusty drum and excellent sample soul. The second track is a good instrumental, with an accessible boom bap, drum and samples that work. The third pick is still decent, the drum is solid, there's a languid female sample and lounge vibes. "MsDiva" is one of the first signs of failure of the structure: shabby sample, bad drum, and second decent sample. The fifth instrumental is decent, then beats with the usual formula of 9th Wonder, good soul sample and horrible inaccessible drum begin to be born. In the eighth choice, the producer puts the drum away and misses the sample.
Then comes his best beat in recent years, "SomethingFlip": boom bap, good dry midtempo drum, excellent melodic samples. Proof that 9th Wonder no longer understands how to make good music, this soundscape doesn't even last half a minute, 27 seconds. Fortunately, there are people on the internet who still have brains and have extended this piece to the well-deserved 10 minutes it should have. After this brief and casual glimpse of talent, the record sinks into the garbage: except for the song by Heather Victoria, which saves her song at the expense of a bad drum and an amateur rapper with a weak and messy style, all songs up to "MidnightChop" are bad or mediocre, the drum machine is perpetually inaccessible and rough, while the samples are annoying, scarce, sometimes childish and the few times they're accessible they're each time killed by a syncopated drum.
In this section, rhythms often consist of a bad drum and a bad sample. "DegreeSoul" has decent chipmunk soul extract and a crazy hi-hat. The previous piece is curious. "NowSoul" boasts a sample that looks ethereal, unsupported by an erratic, annoying, damaging drum machine, and the sample starts to annoy after about twenty seconds. When "MidnightChop" arrives, the producer finds an above average sample, but I begin to think his drum selection is one of the worst in history among non-mainstream producers. There's another beat saved by Heather Victoria, then the record continues its tortuous path to oblivion. "BabyYourEyes" is particularly disappointing: the sample is good, the rhythm is good, but 9th Wonder doesn't let him breathe as he should and kills him for no reason.
There are twelve other very scarce beats, before arriving at "GreaSoul", one of the last highlights of the album: the boy links an ethereal soul sample to a good midtempo drum, finally. Soon after, the album moves on to this dump of discarded beats that I have no idea why 9th Wonder decided to bring it out to the public. Last, but not least, suddenly a golden jewel emerges in this dump: "ForYouJam", beat number 51. Beat boom bap sci-fi, psychedelic, with sample soul and honest drum midtempo. It's another of his best music rugs of the last decade, and it doesn't last 75 seconds. There are other beats after this, but they're not worth listening to.
Before this record, 9th Wonder has never made an album with so many beats, so long, so exhausting. And there was a valid reason not to. It's not good music, very trivially. Records like this are simply a tribute to digging, forcing you to dig for and find pearls. And here they're. Few. Extremely rare. But there are. It's not worth it, though. Not recommended.
Rating: 4.3/10.
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