I'm not really a Slum Village fan but a fan of eLZhi and the production of the late Dilla. It's great to have both of these elements on this album. The other rappers and beats are okay but I honestly think that the first two things I mentioned are what made the group hot. "The Set Up" is a great storytelling track though.
Although not their best album, this one is definitely worth picking up. As another reviewer stated, the Dilla tracks are strong, but others kind of fall off. This is symptomatic of some other dynamics that the group was going through at the time the album was being completed. I wish each MC the best. RIP J. Dilla, Baatin
Every past member is on here, but no Black Milk production for some reason. The Dilla tracks are strong, but the rest lose a bit of the band's essential character for me.
For those of us who regard art as an index of ideas, hopes and anxieties over time, there is a mystique to things that were never able to see the proper light of their respective days: we regard the unfinished manuscript, the sketchbook drafts and the shelved album as phantom links in a given master's evolutionary chain. Popular music, with its tape-trading fanatics and readymade mythologies, is certainly given to this kind of speculation, though… more »
