Styles P. - "Frustration" (mp3)
The release of the independent album The Ghost Sessions, less than six months after Styles P. finished his Interscope contract with the long-delayed Time Is Money, is a commentary on the weird, depressing state of his career: where MCs like Prodigy and Joell Ortiz are releasing albums on Koch to gear up for major label albums, Styles is releasing an album on no-name indie Streetcore to gear up for his Koch album, Five Star General. So it's kind of a minor work by design, the least hyped of 3 albums that he may put out in the space of 12 months. And it's still pretty good, because, well, Styles is good, dropping poignant rhymes as well as goofily earnest non-sequiturs like "I'm conscious but I like to blow weed, too...so I'm complex." The first 12 tracks proper are uniformly good, roughly equal to my 14th favorite album of 2006. And then it all comes off the rails with the 3 "rock remixes" tacked on at the end, which I think were produced by the same guy who worked on M.O.P.'s metal album. They're all predictably pretty mediocre, as rap and as metal (oh god those sloppy double-bass pedal blasts), but then, "Come One, Come All" was a pretty annoying song to begin with.
The overall best tracks are the two Large Professor productions (dude hasn't had a lot of notable credits this decade, but he still shits on 95% of all producers out there), and "The Lessons," which features some awesome live horns from the Hypnotic Brass Band. But my favorite is "Frustration," a 2-minute track where he talks over the beat between verses in lieu of a hook. After so many direct, venomous diss tracks thrown back and forth in the D Block/G-Unit beef, he addresses the toll it's taken on his career without really calling out anyone or dissing anyone, just venting about the two years that Interscope kept his album on the shelf, possibly on 50's command: "here's a little story about some shit that need to stop/ somebody somewhere don't want me to drop/ got me frustrated to the point/ waking up every day, hand is on the joint/ contemplating to myself, should I go and use it/ tell 'em I'm the ghost, I just wanna make my music." Now he can at least do that, even if it's no longer on a major label.
The release of the independent album The Ghost Sessions, less than six months after Styles P. finished his Interscope contract with the long-delayed Time Is Money, is a commentary on the weird, depressing state of his career: where MCs like Prodigy and Joell Ortiz are releasing albums on Koch to gear up for major label albums, Styles is releasing an album on no-name indie Streetcore to gear up for his Koch album, Five Star General. So it's kind of a minor work by design, the least hyped of 3 albums that he may put out in the space of 12 months. And it's still pretty good, because, well, Styles is good, dropping poignant rhymes as well as goofily earnest non-sequiturs like "I'm conscious but I like to blow weed, too...so I'm complex." The first 12 tracks proper are uniformly good, roughly equal to my 14th favorite album of 2006. And then it all comes off the rails with the 3 "rock remixes" tacked on at the end, which I think were produced by the same guy who worked on M.O.P.'s metal album. They're all predictably pretty mediocre, as rap and as metal (oh god those sloppy double-bass pedal blasts), but then, "Come One, Come All" was a pretty annoying song to begin with.
The overall best tracks are the two Large Professor productions (dude hasn't had a lot of notable credits this decade, but he still shits on 95% of all producers out there), and "The Lessons," which features some awesome live horns from the Hypnotic Brass Band. But my favorite is "Frustration," a 2-minute track where he talks over the beat between verses in lieu of a hook. After so many direct, venomous diss tracks thrown back and forth in the D Block/G-Unit beef, he addresses the toll it's taken on his career without really calling out anyone or dissing anyone, just venting about the two years that Interscope kept his album on the shelf, possibly on 50's command: "here's a little story about some shit that need to stop/ somebody somewhere don't want me to drop/ got me frustrated to the point/ waking up every day, hand is on the joint/ contemplating to myself, should I go and use it/ tell 'em I'm the ghost, I just wanna make my music." Now he can at least do that, even if it's no longer on a major label.
Labels: hip hop
This entry was posted
on Saturday, July 07, 2007 at 10:55 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Post a Comment