Threshold (2022)
Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.
If you had told me in 1993 that Del and Kool Keith would colaborate on an LP together, I would have been one of the happiest people on the planet. Even in 2022, I was really excited to get my hands on this. The album is Kool Keith on production (and contributing a verse on album opener "Abominable Squad") and Del handling the vocals. Unfotunately, I just don't like the beats all that much.
The production is exceedingly minimal, with space bleeps and bloops over percussion that doesn't have much in the way of heft or low end. It's kind of Casio sounding and isn't bringing that forceful production that I favor in hip hop.
Del's lyrics and delivery are still pretty great. He is my all time favorite lyricist and once again the rhymes he's bringing out are complicated, unique and very, very Del. But the production really drags things down. I realize that I'm old, but I just wish we could have had an album that sounded for like The Four Horsemen or Funk Your Head Up. 90s style beats with Del and Keith trading verses? Now that's something I could really get behind. For the most part I ended up getting this album just for collection completest purposes as I want to get all of Del's full lengths on vinyl.
Del The Funky Homosapien & Kool Keith Present FNKPMPN - Subatomic:
https://koolkeith.bandcamp.com/album/subatomic
No comments:
Post a Comment