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| Take Murs from the Living Legends and 9th Wonder from the hailed, hyped and hurrayed Little Brother and you got an EP of ten tracks with one doing the rhymes and the other doing the beats. What could have been a bad date, set up by an untalented match maker, in reality sounds like
a match made in heaven. |
| But remembering Murs' past, he has shown that he can spit over pretty much any beat. Saying however that 9th Wonder is doing 'any beat' would be a sever understatement. Even considering all the sever overstatements on 9th's work this world has come across. |
| After a quick "Intro", the first real song is "Bad Man!". Murs talks about serious women trouble, be it that he supposedly hits the women, doesn't call the women, doesn't do foreplay, or basically is male. The
beat has a tame reggae vibe to it, which doesn't hurt at all though. As doesn't the continuously repeated 'bad man' sample. They simply separate the many funny, real and observational rhymes we are used to from Murs. |
| The issue of women (or the lack of 'em) returns on "The Pain", where Murs describes himself as "more Coldplay than Ice-T", as well as on "Freak These Tales", which is the nastiest and most kinky
of the three. Another of his self-descriptions appears on "3:16". Here Murs says of himself, that he tries "to walk this thin line between intelligence and ignorance". It's the title track and a song where 9th turns the niceness
of the beat up a notch. This is more of what we are expecting, as the boom bap is strongly reminiscent of the early nineties. |
| "Trevor An' Them" gives us Murs at one of his strongest traits: story telling. The real life un-super human tale is told over a steady beat that's merely offering the canvas for Murs word-colors. In the same ballpark, Murs shoots the well played ball of "H-U-S-T-L-E"
and "And This Is For...". He talked about every day hustles on his excellent "The End Of The Beginning" album too and now returns to tell us about how real life is like. We obviously know, as we live one too, and don't believe what
we see on TV and in videos. But in Murs' way to rhyme, there's just purely entertaining styles that get us to listen attentively. What's partly because of the topic, but also because of the cleverness of a "Walk Like A Man". |
| There need to be more things said about "And This Is For..." though. Because Murs raises additional and different points: like his frustration of looking into the crowd and seeing less and less people of his complexion
and shade. He continues to raise many valid points, like he's criticizing white people using the n-word, the way too many people treat this rap thing as a phase and how life is still different to him and them. The last verse, however, will leave many fans confused - and in the cold. Because here Murs
even goes further than just addressing the frustration. He in many ways disses white rap artists, what's rather interesting considering who is in his crew and who he worked with. But he also dissed his white fans, arguing somewhat that they are keeping the Black fans away. Without him offering proof
for this argument though. Instead he comes off as ungrateful. |
| As you can't choose your fans. They choose you. You can win them though. And "The Animal" is a track to recruit many more fans: the 9th Wonder beat is smooth and splendid, while Phonte and Murs take this beat to show that
it was meant for them to create something beautiful. As said, this sounds like a match made in heaven. |
| review: tadah |
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