Having duos in hip hop? Hmmm… maybe as singers it could work out pretty easily but it’s pretty hard to come across two guys doing rap music and doing it well enough that you don’t notice that one is outshining the other. I can only think of a few successes; Redman & Methodman, The Lox, Everyday Process… but the subjects of this review, LMNO & Theory Hazit seem to possess this chemistry that enables them to come hard enough to get them appreciated. It’s like LMNO’s the knife that cuts the meat and Mr. Hazit does the rest.
On Determined to Fly the dynamic duo serve a vintage hip hop album with no strings attached, unadulterated game, more than convincing delivery and the type of beats that got me hooked on the beautiful genre in the first place. Almost everything on the album’s perfect even down to the album art, a fish with outspread wings leaping above some water and the mere sight of that even without hearing single scratch from the album is enough to bless you. It’s a beautiful tribute to a beautiful art form seeing how very few people put much thought into album art nowadays.
Songs that definitely should be on constant repeat on this project include “Boombaptism”, “Money” with Suzi Analogue, “Born to Write” and the title track “Determined to Fly” a really dope jam and my favorite “Full Motion” especially because of the last verse where Theory Hazit merged analogies on both sports and different music genres together! Pure bliss I tell you. Of course there’s the seemingly inevitable drawback of this album being the type that not everyone in your class or down at choir practice would be into. That’s probably intended because the album comes across as targeted at only a select few, the “conscious/underground hip hop heads”.
Whatever the case may be, Determined to Fly is a 4.5 star effort that makes 2010 a happy year musically for anyone with good ears. Peace!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment