Thursday, January 28, 2016

Ghostface Killah and his Sour (but sweet sounding) Soul

Okay first off I want to apologize for the long ass hiatus I had, been swamped with alot of work and studying, I haven't been skateboarding as much as I'd like to let alone write and share what I discovered with you great folks at home. Now that is out of the way, let's get into the topic at hand, which is this great album I am writing about. The album in question is brought to you by none other than the Wu Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah, who is, in my opinion, THE most consistent member of the Clan and one of the best solo storytellers PERIOD. In early April 2015, Tone Starks himself released an collaboration album with a Toronto-based jazz instrumental group BadBadNotGood titled Sour Soul. I honestly never heard of BadBadNotGood so I decided to listen to their previous work before this album and they are a very talented group of dudes that can jam some ill jazz and funk and they also collaborated in the past with Odd Future. With that said, I pressed play on this album. The intro (Mono) plays out like a one minute movie intro with a suspenseful undertone, like introducing an villain into a story. After that the title track Sour Soul starts, which Ghostface starts out with "ayo, cleanse me, clean me of my sour soul and fishes/my mind races from the satellite dishes/no technology, this world's corrupt/they can't feed me food for thought, I won't budge". However my favorite line came from verse 2 in this track-"Pure Alkaline, that fluoride it'll fuck you up/I seen a spaceship fly out the back of a truck/Diamond water I've been splashed by the fountain of youth, had a molar fall out, I grew in a gold tooth, bulletproof..." I can type up the entire verse but too lazy to do that but I think ya'll get the message I'm trying to convey on hard as fuck the lyrical content of this single track here is. Next track titled "Six Degrees" featured a verse from Danny Brown who I was surprised to hear on an album with Tone Starks. Right after that it kicks into this thirty second jazz break which sounded something like a heist scene in a Pam Grier movie from the 70s. The next track, "Gunshowers" is actually my personal favorite out of this album, which also features one of my favorite MCs Elzhi from the group Slum Village. one notable bar from this track: "Highly contagious, Bathsalt flows leaving bodies all on stages/Locked behind cages, Don of all ages/Its Ghostface nigga never plead in the cases/But I plead the fifth, four-fifth by the belt buckle/Crack stone-faced niggas with the steel of a knuckle/Go ahead and chuckle, I have uncle murder your goons/Hoes in balloons, ODing off rice from Columbia". I'm telling you, the lyrical content and production values is like something I have never heard in a hip hop album in my life and I consider myself something like a hip hop purist. "Stark's Reality" is a 2 minute instrumental adding a dark undertone with the guitar notes and violin use. Another great track "Tone's Rap" is like a pimp memoir being voiced by Ghostface himself, it just seems so raw yet funky at the same time and I am loving it!! Truth be told, Sour Soul is such a great album and has so many great sound attributes that I can type about here but don't really have the time to so I apologize in advance. One last thing I will add is that this album also features an track with MF Doom titled "Ray Gun" and this track also is something like a teaser I believe for the upcoming Ghostface/MF Doom collabo album to be released later this year. I'll be honest: I first downloaded this album to my phone after hearing it on Youtube but this album is so good I purchased the physical copy of this album from F.Y.E. It is very WELL WORTH the ten bucks I dropped to cop this album. If you ever heard Ghostface's last collabo he did with Adrien Younge "Twelve Reasons to Die" then you'll definitely love the production and storytelling of this album from Ghost and BadBadNotGood. Hope ya'll enjoy this brief write up and I will be back with more consistent updates on this blog from here on out. Peace. oh and here is a link to the album. hope ya'll enjoy :)

Monday, January 18, 2016

Sunday, January 17, 2016

A little late but..

                                                         WE WELCOME YOU 2016!!!