Aceyalone - "Magnificent City"
(Project Blowed / Decon, 2006)
Hear The Music
Aceyalone - "Supahero"
The world of Underground hip hop can be a mixed bag. On one hand, the lyricists tend to be overly poetic in a tacky overwrought sense, letting artistic hubris overtake actual quality of content. And beat producers often end up relying on album-length instrumental symphonies to garner them a reputation.
With this album, Aceyalone, one of Los Angeles' most acclaimed underground rappers, joins ranks with RJD2, a Philadelphia producer known for his multilayered instrumental compositions. The result is a mixed bag -- the sum of the parts forms a below-average album, but a handful of tracks on this release are better than most of what the hip hop world has produced in a long while.
Both Aceyalone and RJD2 stick with what they know best. On the songs in which their two unique styles meld, the result is sublime. "I want to love you 'cause that's my duty; it's not your booty, it's not your beauty," Acey raps slyly on "Supahero," over a beat so insanely layered with depth that I've never heard anything quite like it. The track, an anthemic ode to women from a flawed male character, succeeds because of its ear-catching beat and the spectacular syncopation of Acey's fast-paced lyrical assault. "Baby I'm your star but you're lookin' for a superhero. But Superman don't fly no more 'cause he ain't down with the people ... he ain't nowhere to be found when he should be fighting evil." The track runs the gamut from stylish hip to humorous, and it's such an ear-catching hook you won't be able to stop yourself from joining in on that chorus.
But not every song manages to mesh the two competing styles of Aceyalone and RJD2. "Moore" features a spastic electro beat melded matched up with a pretentious lyric about greed and gluttony that just never gets off the ground. "Solomon Jones" has a jazzy soulful beat that gets wasted on a spoken word story-poem about "big bad Solomon Jones." The song is one gigantic cliché and repetitive: "Back at the bar, playing cards, lookin' hard, was big bad Solomon Jones. And watchin' over his luck was the love of his life, this lady that was known as Simone." The entire song's like that. Sometimes bad writing's just bad writing. It's just hard to get behind a meandering lyric that, when it reaches it's lyrical punchline at the end, a new character suddenly appears, kills Solomon Jones and runs off with his girl. There's no reward, and it kills the momentum of the album.
The whole album's like that. As soon as a song grabs at your ears, it is replaced by an inferior one that leaves the listener wanting to skip around, pick and choose -- and when only a few songs end up being worth choosing, it's almost better to buy those songs online from Napster and leave the rest of the album behind.
What's disappointing is that this could have been a great record. The jazzy samples of "All For U" suggest Acey's got an interest in blending Will Smith vocal style with the music of Parliament Funkadelic. "Heaven" features a rock-metal beat that lifts from classic rock bands like Zeppelin, then morphs into an impressive lyrical feast focusing on a conversation between a man "rottin' in a stinkin' hole three hundred months" who makes a deal with the devil for a second chance.
Songs like these suggest that when RJD2 and Aceyalone get together and craft songs that blend their differing styles into something cohesive the songs succeed. When they rely on their pretensions, assuming that if you combine arty lyrics and symphonic beats, the two will work together and produce a higher form of hip hop.
Instead, those songs fall flat and destroy any chance of the album as a whole making any significant impression. The few superior tracks on the album are obscured by the mediocrity of the rest. What a shame.
For more information on Aceyalone, visit http://www.projectblowed.com
Hear The Music
Aceyalone - "Supahero"
The world of Underground hip hop can be a mixed bag. On one hand, the lyricists tend to be overly poetic in a tacky overwrought sense, letting artistic hubris overtake actual quality of content. And beat producers often end up relying on album-length instrumental symphonies to garner them a reputation.
With this album, Aceyalone, one of Los Angeles' most acclaimed underground rappers, joins ranks with RJD2, a Philadelphia producer known for his multilayered instrumental compositions. The result is a mixed bag -- the sum of the parts forms a below-average album, but a handful of tracks on this release are better than most of what the hip hop world has produced in a long while.
Both Aceyalone and RJD2 stick with what they know best. On the songs in which their two unique styles meld, the result is sublime. "I want to love you 'cause that's my duty; it's not your booty, it's not your beauty," Acey raps slyly on "Supahero," over a beat so insanely layered with depth that I've never heard anything quite like it. The track, an anthemic ode to women from a flawed male character, succeeds because of its ear-catching beat and the spectacular syncopation of Acey's fast-paced lyrical assault. "Baby I'm your star but you're lookin' for a superhero. But Superman don't fly no more 'cause he ain't down with the people ... he ain't nowhere to be found when he should be fighting evil." The track runs the gamut from stylish hip to humorous, and it's such an ear-catching hook you won't be able to stop yourself from joining in on that chorus.
But not every song manages to mesh the two competing styles of Aceyalone and RJD2. "Moore" features a spastic electro beat melded matched up with a pretentious lyric about greed and gluttony that just never gets off the ground. "Solomon Jones" has a jazzy soulful beat that gets wasted on a spoken word story-poem about "big bad Solomon Jones." The song is one gigantic cliché and repetitive: "Back at the bar, playing cards, lookin' hard, was big bad Solomon Jones. And watchin' over his luck was the love of his life, this lady that was known as Simone." The entire song's like that. Sometimes bad writing's just bad writing. It's just hard to get behind a meandering lyric that, when it reaches it's lyrical punchline at the end, a new character suddenly appears, kills Solomon Jones and runs off with his girl. There's no reward, and it kills the momentum of the album.
The whole album's like that. As soon as a song grabs at your ears, it is replaced by an inferior one that leaves the listener wanting to skip around, pick and choose -- and when only a few songs end up being worth choosing, it's almost better to buy those songs online from Napster and leave the rest of the album behind.
What's disappointing is that this could have been a great record. The jazzy samples of "All For U" suggest Acey's got an interest in blending Will Smith vocal style with the music of Parliament Funkadelic. "Heaven" features a rock-metal beat that lifts from classic rock bands like Zeppelin, then morphs into an impressive lyrical feast focusing on a conversation between a man "rottin' in a stinkin' hole three hundred months" who makes a deal with the devil for a second chance.
Songs like these suggest that when RJD2 and Aceyalone get together and craft songs that blend their differing styles into something cohesive the songs succeed. When they rely on their pretensions, assuming that if you combine arty lyrics and symphonic beats, the two will work together and produce a higher form of hip hop.
Instead, those songs fall flat and destroy any chance of the album as a whole making any significant impression. The few superior tracks on the album are obscured by the mediocrity of the rest. What a shame.
For more information on Aceyalone, visit http://www.projectblowed.com
posted by Jonathan Sanders @ 10:28 AM
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