producers: karma infinite

A while ago I reviewed the crew effort "Legacy" by Alliance (click here to view it). The record was very much not to my liking, and the review was no to the liking of a host of cats that were calling me all kinds of names, that then was to my amusement. Interesting though was, that the artists reviewed seemed to have less or even no problem with the review. And hence they didn't hesitate to send us their new material, to again check it out, and see what this disturbed little mind here has to say about it.

So we shall give FX our attention. And FX is the cat that made the best impression on the Alliance record, so we are quite full of hope about this. He teams up with Karma Infinite (and we will review that cats album soon too) who provided all the beats on this record, making this a well separated duo effort. After the "Intro", "Mega Real" is the first cut to check out. What we still don't like about FX is that he tries to sound so hard and that throughout the album. Meaning he is talking about all them hard, harsh, and 'yo, don't step to me' issues. Maybe you actually better not step to him in real life, that quite easily could be the case, but we are not too interested in listening to that for a lengthy period of time. The anger is changing into frustration, to then returning to some serious teeth grinding on "Cause And FX". Here FX tries to put some philosophical thought into this, however, it often is stuck between rhymes that boarder the self pity. His flow though is interesting, as it's recognizable different.

Karma Infinite then provides his first thoroughly appealing beat (that's based on a known sample though) on "You Wanna", a cut that features Koyotte and Prime Prolifik. Another guest is featured on "On Da Mic", his name being Klepto. This samples the piano of "Ike's Mood" by Isaac Hayes, that quite possibly is one of the nicest moments ever recorded. So with this sample, it's impossible that this cut sounds wack, especially as it's combined with cool scratches during the chorus. The strings of "Get In Where You Fit In" are hooked up properly too, that didn't yet inspire FX to change his content though, as he's still trying to tell us how hard, bad, good, different, and so on, he is, without spitting punchlines that are recognizable and memorable as such.

Hence we are struggling to find new things to talk about, with "My Soldiers" featuring the Blood Brothers doing more of the same. A real change then appears on "Bob Ya Head", as FX is also getting quieter with his delivery, still spitting bragging and boasting words though. The beat goes for the blues vibe, what Karma does aight too, while he chooses to sample "Searching" by Roy Ayers on "Stop Holding Me Back", with the title giving away what this cut is talking about. The album ends with the "Outro", that's a cool jazzy sample, that should actually have been used for a track, as it's one of the nicest beats on here.

And so we need to say something about Karma's beats: they are cool. But mainly due to them going for known samples, and often merely looping the breaks. That makes his part of the album sound like he just bought a couple of break records and sampled what he found on there, rather than do some digging himself. That of course, if actually the case, would be a serious no no. So we are still somewhat hesitant about this record, that is much better than the Alliance record. But with little to offer us lyrically, and beats that are cool mainly due to the niceness of the sample, we see progress, but not yet more.