Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Underground Trini album pick of the month (August): THE ISSUES LIVE



Yeah folks, Da Face here. Last night, I represented in the 2nd anniversary of "One Mic" and thankfully, I much improved on my performance (wish yuh was there eh). Much big up to Skeeto, Akila and Gamma for their drive and consistency, which has contributed to making "One Mic" the phenomena that it is. And for all you folks who want to be down with the One Mic crew it's so simple; just join the damn group on facebook nuh. That so hard?

Anyway, so I finished recording this ultra-hard track with Skeeto called "I won't pretend" some time last month that is like (gasp) really hard and will definitely step on some toes and what not and then he lets me know that he has a mixtape that he is letting out. So me being me, I purchase it one time and start bumping it, taking in the concepts and the lyrics etc. For those who don't know Skeeto, he's a dude who raps authentic trini like me with a very poetic, rapso-oriented flow that is versatile enough to tear up straight up hip hop beats like "Go" produced by Kanye West and "All about the Benjamins" produced by Bad Boy among others. Usually, Skeeto is a 'backpacker' type of rapper'(I consider him a local Talib Kweli) in that he usually spits knowledge but he gets playful on this record at points to the extent where he dedicates a song to Mr. Headbutter himself, Zinedine Zidane. Good stuff.

As I told Skeeto already, I personally found that he had too many interludes on the mixtape although to be fair, most of them are poetic, spoken word pieces which I found didn't mesh well with the rap beats but other people didn't share my opinion. Nevertheless, there is much to like here and about four songs which are the among the best that I've heard this year in any genre which says a lot for a $20 mixtape. So do me a favour nuh, vibes de man and cop his mixtape. It will be one of the best $20 that you have ever spent.

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