Collaborative album between Brooklyn rapper Killah Priest and Philadelphia rapper Chief Kamachi. Tekneek has three beats, Diamond Legit and C Sik have two each, then the remaining set is split evenly between Emonex, Danny Diggs, Dev Rocka, E. Dan, and DJ Woool. These are all names you may never have heard of, excluding DJ Woool, possibly. Planet Asia has the honor of being the only guest on the record.
Released by Good Hands and distributed by Traffic, this effort is hard to describe. There's more Killah Priest than Chef Kamachi, even if you wouldn't say so from the tracklist, and both get a solo cut: Army of the Pharaohs emcee performs a single verse in "Don't Waste Your Lungs" over a Tekneek beat, while the Wu-Tang affiliate commits to structuring a three-verse track for "See Clearly," supported by a soundscape devised by DJ Woool. Both musically and thematically, they both try to combine their styles, and the result might not please fans of either performer, which is why I don't think it's a good place to start for either discography.
Overall, it's not a record for the casual listener, rather it's a product that rejects them, starting with a cover that's as basic as it is uninspired, passing through an amateurish production and ending with a lyricism that's a bit below average. The use of samples is limited, one comes from O.V. Wright's "A Fool Can't See the Light", now certified Wu, since already used by RZA (for the final section of "Motherless Child" on Tony Starks' debut and a few years later also for the first disk of LA the Darkman), Mathematics, and after the release of this collaboration, reused again by Killah Priest ("Fire Stone", 2013). DJ Rhettmatic freshens the tape with some scratches on C-Sik's productions.
The music, while trying to differentiate itself on each track, sounds poor and feeble, excessively raw: after the initial triumphant rhythm, Planet Asia comes to tear his spot on a poor metallic beat, then E. Dan does a good job behind the keyboards for "All Been Buried", and up to that point the best beat on the tape was likely to be the interlude "Time Out Revisited" produced by Dev Rocka. Without too much effort Tekneek turns out to be the strongest beatmaker on the product, with three good musical solutions in the second half of the CD. The rest of the production offered is a bit forgettable and from a thematic point of view the guys travel a bit on autopilot, instead committing themselves to the execution of the lyrics: overall, this three-quarters of an hour turns out to be non-essential from every point of view.
No comments:
Post a Comment