[Precedent]

Captain: Silver

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Negro Necro Nekros by Dälek

v.

Captain: Eyezayzay


Masters Of The Universe by Binary Star

[Precedent]

Negro Necro Nekros

Masters Of The Universe is good, but its length is justified. Negro Necro Nekros is pretty interesting, but seldom did I think "oh, this is great". Both are about the same on my scale. Pretty much voting for what I think I'll think about more.

[Kiki]

They both look like intelligent albums. The ones which will be arty. I have never heard of either act.

[eyezayzay]

Masters of the Universe is the most slept on underground hip hop album of all time. And I think it was during an era where Bad Boy was running everything on top. If you keep that in mind and listen to it, you'll have to love it.
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[Silver]

Damn, this is a rough first round matchup. Sticking with my nom because I think it's one of the most interesting, unique hip-hop albums ever that manages to pull off what a lot of experimental hip-hop doesn't in still being really fun to listen to, but Masters of the Universe is fantastic as well.

[Hayden]

What a shame

Both should be moving on.
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Doubles & Conch

[WindowAbove]

NNN is my third favorite Dalek album, but even though it's not as much of a masterpiece as their next two albums (particularly Absence), I do prefer it to MotU, which was decent but utterly unmemorable.

[Skinny]

I just don't particularly like dälek, and I think I'm OK with that. While I often bemoan the lack of weirdness in mainstream hip-hop, there are also just some experimental hip-hop artists who I don't vibe with. Negro Necro Nekros has always felt to me to be just too cluttered, lacking a clear voice, full of largely unmemorable beats (even if I do quite like the 'RZA in The Twilight Zone' thing they have going on) and all-too-often incoherent rapping (and even when I can make out what MC dälek is saying, it sounds a bit like an unnecessary halfway house between a stoned Aesop Rock and a forgotten weed carrier for Non Phixion). That said, this album does still have some things going for it, namely that it portrays a dark mood very well, evoking genuine claustrophobia at times, and I'm a particular fan of the way some of the songs stray so far from their initial path that they become different beasts entirely, something that may be relatively commonplace in rock, jazz, or even electronic music, but which is definitely a brave trick to try to pull off on a hip-hop album. It's an album I would vote for ahead of quite a few albums in this tournament. But here comes the inevitable 'but'; Masters of the Universe is a record I love. I can see why some people might find it over-long, repetitive, or even generic, but I hear the very essence of hip-hop in this album, with two rappers swapping literate, tight-flowed rhymes effortlessly over playful boom-bap beats. It might not be able to challenge Negro Necro Nekros in the originality stakes, but I can't help but admire its almost puritanical dedication to a specific type of hip-hop, one in which self-education and self-aggrandising go hand-in-hand over dusty samples of old jazz and soul records, keeping the old story-telling spirit alive on classics like 'Glenn Close' and 'Evolution of a Man', just being about as 'hip-hop' as hip-hop gets. Sure, it's not the most unique record in this tournament, but it might just be one of the best. Vote to Binary Star.
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

[RepoMan]

[undefined]

Honestly just switch a few words around in Skinny's post and you've found why I'm voting for NNN. Of course Masters of The Universe is fucking beast and I am far from satisfied voting against it this early when it would take my vote over like 90% of this tourney, but Negro Necro Nekros is simply one of my favorite albums of all time (in any genre) for most of the reasons that Neil summarized in his post ironically describing why he is not voting for it

That said, I strongly disagree with the sentiment that it lacks a clear voice. I think said voice is definitely buried underneath layers of dense noise-inflected production, but for as long as most of the tracks go on, I've always felt a definite sense of direction, but what is remarkable is how that direction can subtly change (more than once) over the course of a single track. Often I think the rapping is more a supplement to the production, being deliberately drowned out and "incoherent" (for lack of a kinder term) so as to blend in with with the diverse and dynamic layers of fuck knows what; it's like the shoegaze vocal aesthetic but within the context of hip-hop, and as stoned as the lyrics themselves actually appear, I love it; (but I certainly wont fault anybody for voting Binary Star because holy shit that is one hell of an album)