This is a bit of a strange listen, even at the third attempt. It's weirdly dated... it just sounds like a conscious hip-hop record from the mid-to-late 2000s, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's sorta unexpected in 2016. Like, this album could've come out eight or nine years ago and would've sounded right at home, but in 2016 it sounds oddly quaint. Even Elzhi's style of rapping, with his staccato flow and backflips in the name of internal rhyming, brings to mind an era that (although relatively recent in terms of actual timespan) feels like a lifetime away when you consider how much hip-hop has branched out and progressed since. He's quite a conceptual rapper in a sense, a throwback to the days when the likes of Nas or Pharoahe Monch would wow fans with their excessively extended metaphors, and occasionally feels like he's overreaching with some of these songs (the constant references to outer space on 'Alienated' feel very forced, for example), but for the most part he manages to pull off these concepts without it feeling too corny, largely because there's a consistent thread running throughout the album which deals with his own loneliness and insecurity and recent isolation (which is reinforced by the production, painted in deep blues and muted reds, largely made up of subtly soulful, meditative boom bap that Elzhi sounds very comfortable over). I think I like it, but I'm not sure how much. There's definitely something very admirable, however, in Elzhi's refusal to conform to any modern trends whatsoever, even at a subtle level.
I'm very much in the same boat, I can't decide if I just like the album or really like the album. There's some super cheesy moments but Elzhi somehow manages to pull it off with his incredibly imaginative approach to the genre that I can't help but respect. He's a super smart guy; I've always felt there's something holding him back from being great, but I can't figure out what.
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neilgee
jwammo12
Norman Bates
