Braille Weapon Aid Review

Label- Syntax Records

Braille: system of writing for the blind that uses characters made up of raised dots.
Weapon: something used to injure, defeat or destroy or s means of contending against another.
Aid: to give assistance or provide with what is useful to achieve an end.
2010: the year we’re in at the moment
Bryan Winchester: this cool dude from Portland, Oregon, father, rapper servant of Jesus Christ.
Vintage: possessing quality, akin to being classic, superior
Sigh… forgive my apparent rant by text as you wonder what the vocabulary lesson is about. The words I’ve just defined seem unrelated; only if you’ve not heard Braille’s 2010 offering and nice follow up to 2009’s Cloudnineteen. Weapon Aid is pure hip hop, infused with the type of quality that’ll be felt by even the few alive who are unschooled in hip hop. Braille has often made the genre something that has texture, something that comes alive, something you can relate to whether you’re a guy like me in faraway Africa or a down under in Australia.
Weapon Aid is a 10 track offering (and Braille’s 6th studio album) that had just one feature (theBreax) leaving us with the opportunity of enjoying Braille’s potent lyricism to the fullest. songs like “Revenge (The Right Way)” and “Up” are five star offerings that’ll be here for a long time (archeologists from the future take note). “Poison”, “Thinking Shoes”, “Complexicated”, “Nothing Left to Say” and “Give Myself” (a wonderful love song) contribute to this vintage mix of great tracks. Braille on each one asserts himself as that emcee you know you should listen to and he does it with great humility. The beats on the album make your ears happy and that’s the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from Braille. Ranging from heavy synths to organs and heavy guitar riffs to the customary live drums; it’s the kind of production that gets you breaking out in goose bumps and the like.
This album is so good you can use it to silence that annoying neigbour of yours who keeps taking cheap shots at Christian rap (in this day and age?) even though what’s bumping in his music player is obviously garbage (content wise, production wise and otherwise). I give it a 4.5 without flinching except that I think it even deserves a higher rating. If you haven’t heard it already why not listen and try to prove me wrong if you can.
P.S. check out the album art and leave a comment if you can figure it out. That’s how deep it gets…

Humble Beast Humble Beginnings Vol. One Review

Label- Humble Beast/Syntax
Not too many compilations are ever worth the listen, even when you put the best artists together. So I normally approach such projects with a “win some, lose some” attitude. Well, Humble Beast smashed that to bits for me. Some of the most respected cats in Christian rap came together (much like Voltron) and formed a “Humble Beast” a new movement aiming to take on the hip hop culture with their brand of creative, real and truthful hip hop. With guys like Braille, Odd Thomas and Theory Hazit on the team, there’s no need to overemphasize the resulting success. The concept is simple; emcees with beastly delivery yet humble enough to serve Christ with their gifting.
On Humble Beginnings Volume One there’s quite a lot of storytelling, cool production and mind-blowing collaborations which makes for a neatly done project. As brief as 11 tracks, this project is a solid argument for the case “hip hop is not dead”. With each cat bringing his own experience, style and craft to the table we are privileged to hear and experience the best of the best.
Kicking off with what seems like an unusual yet impressive intro for this type of project (a Pastor Eric Mason sermon excerpt), you know you are in for a good listen as you slide down the track list. “The Dream That You Gave To Me” with Braille and the late Citizen Aim (RIP) is a simple and awesome joint, a pledge to make god’s business one’s business. Sareem Poems serves up a nice metaphorical story about “The Beast” on “The Story that’s Rarely Told” and then there’s the banger “Humble Hungry” with Theory Hazit, Odd Thomas and Citizen Aim. Each cat spitting solid verses over a beat that’ll be hard to get out of you head. Propaganda weighs in with “Beautiful Pain” an unusual but truthful ode to pain and by the time Odd Thomas ends things with “Truth Wars” you’ll probably get upset that the album’s done! Each song gets you thinking and for me that’s the beauty of this project; rap for the “thinking man”. The production of each beat is excellent and the mixing comes across beautifully except for a few cases where I couldn’t hear Citizen Aim’s verses properly. I loved the emphasis on live drums on most of the songs, a rarity nowadays.
I really can’t wait for Volume Two, whenever and if it ever comes out. I can’t help but wonder that if they call this humble, what’s next???