Waiting for another good street album to appear, with the release of the Crimewave album "Scripture Won: The Beginning Of...", the wait is over. The five man collective of Karachi-Raw, Shamus, Fluid, Maximillian and Skar offer us a look into the harsh reality of the between the buildings, doing that with the support of a multisome of surprisingly established producers. Hence we get Alchemist, the Beatnuts' Psycho Les, Buckwild and Shok amongst others giving us the fitting gripping soundscapes to the verses. A quick introduction gives "Intro" where each member describes his style.

The first proper track "Think Big (Get Big)" then gets the head nodding instantly going, with The Smith Bros beat doing something good with a repetitive piano loop. Lyrically this in a way talks about the ancient truth of 'if you think positive, positive things will come to you'. What means that the verses are used to big themselves up. Your head will be kept in motion, with the more reduced and unflashy "Johnny", that's produced by The Alchemist and that talks about traitors and snitches, here referred to as 'Johnny's. The Buckwild produced "What Side You On" is then very reminiscent of a previously released track, with me again struggling to put my finger on what the other track was. This nevertheless is giving us a restrained hardness that's very fitting for the comfortable flows of the rhymesmiths. And the same 'I wonder where I heard that before' thing happens with the opening sample of "Foreign Lands", as that bit was also used somewhere else before. The Armageddon beat afterwards is something new though, while the lyrics doing less reflective and more pure street verses.

There's also a bundle of smoother cuts on here, like "Hard Times", where just those are explored on the lyrics tip. The Psycho Les beat is taking us back a couple of years, what is never a bad thing. And even the singing of Shantel works well on such a track. She appears again on the reminiscing and paying respect to passed on loved ones "It Ain't The Same", that might be an often done track, what however says nothing about how heartfelt and honestly written the words are. The "Your B!*@! Too (Skit)" then even reflects on the possibility of your girlfriend cheating on you, just like you could be cheating on you. And such rare honesty is progressed, not thematically though, on "Don't Talk About Love", where the words speak on what can go wrong if one messes up in a relationship. The beat is borrowing from a Sade tune, what then obviously makes it very smooth. The almost romantic piano of "Wild 4 Life" is misleading, because once the strings come on, a certain grit is prominent. Lyrically we are also served with verses that don't talk about the flowery side of things.

"F*!k Y'All" is just a quick interlude where one of the cats goes for one of those quick flows, spitting for almost a minute to then declare "fuck y'all, cause I don't even rap like this". More of the straight up spitting is done on "Streets Smarts", while another interlude to mention is "Just A Beat", where some time is put to the side to give this Lou E Fingaz beat some shine. With cuts like "Certified", "Dan-Sin Teardrops" the album is rounded out with a solid number of tracks that have enough break through appeal, without them going for the blatant bubble gum. And finally, there's also the weak cuts on here, like "No Lov (7)" featuring C-Terra and Boxx, with the topics touching upon the struggles, going as far as to suggest that life might not even have love for the heroes of this track. The beat on "Tell Me" is then straight up unimpressive.

And that's what the album gives you: lyrics from the rough hours of the day, that don't give you too much time to come up with spacey flows or concepts, but make it necessary to tell your surrounding what you have to endure and witness. And these verses are coupled with the appropriate companionship of straight forward beats, that are neither trying to come abstract, nor do they try to get a club crowd wild. And with that said, it's lined out what you can expect from this album. With all of what you can expect being done with skill and more care than your regular album of this sub-genre, hence we don't hesitate to give this our nod of approval.