FX is coming with his follow up to "Cause And FX", this time the program being called "FX And Cause". And again he depends on the beats of Karma Infinite, who we have to say a little bit about, before we get going with the review: On the last record that we reviewed that features Karma's production (Tradition's "Supervillain"), we raised the question, if Karma jacks beats. He in the mean time assured us that he doesn't, what we have no reason to dispute. What however still doesn't solve the whole trouble about him so often going for all those known samples? Why not dig, if he has the means and equipment to mess with samples? Then again, that's a mere statement in retrospect, unless Karma is again going for the previously used sources on here again. Well, let's find out.

Karma doesn't go for the known samples this time, what we enjoy. But he still loops them, with often enough not doing much more but putting a very similar drum to the sample, and calling it a day. What he also unfortunately seldom does, is adapt the lyrics to the beat, or the beat to the lyrics. So the sometimes present bridges are just happening and going, without being taken into consideration. However, beats like the soulful "A Few Minutes", the melodic "This Is Da Story", the obscure and reduced "Love 2 Love U", as well as the jazzy "Bennie Blanco" are cool, with the ills we mentioned at the beginning of this paragraphs, if present, being less obvious, or less able to spoil the songs.

Lyrically however, we still got a lot of trouble to enjoy FX. His flow is talking in a very staccato way, with every word being separated and the vocal tone is raised and lowered in a constant up and down, that is not sounding natural. Over the span of eight tracks, he's trying to portrait himself as one hard mo-fo, or as a strong rapper, as well as hating on the haters (like on "Stop Da Hate", that features Klepto, as well as one wack, both in style and content, hook), with again the not effortless flow taking away the intended to achieve impression. And while tracks like "This Is Da Story", that features one of the strongest beats, is being spoiled by the corny sung hook, that is just tragic, as FX is actually making the effort to do a track where he's talking about real life struggle, him sharing his hard past with us. On here, as well as on "A Few Minutes", where he restrains his sing songy flow, the result is sounding much better. And speaking of sounding better: hopefully on the next record, they can better the bad recording of the voices, that would help the total a lot as well.

So once more we have to send the twosome back to the lab, this being honest and well meant advice and criticism. You gotta admire the effort they put into their music, their motivation and determination. That however doesn't make their music immediately brilliant, but we do hear that they are progressing. And with us getting releases very frequently, the steps might be small from one to the next, but if we remember the first few songs we heard from these cats, there's a vast difference between back then and right now. So we hope that there's a similar quantum leap still ahead of us.