producers: jamal cherry, tony lyrical, 558, yusef jamal.

Standard is a double edged sword. While it can be something good, as in 'high standard', or 'setting the standard', meaning, setting the stakes higher, it can also mean that it's just 'standard material'. So it's nothing special, the norm, just some regular ish. But when Tony Lyrical (the Nonchalant One) calls his album "ISO 9000: Standard Series Hip Hop", we are quite tempted to say that this is a clever name. Cause with using this label, one talk without saying it out loud about 'new procedures'. Improved ways of doing something. If your firm wants to get a ISO certificate, it needs to live up to certain demands. And if one declares to be able to even define such rules and regulations, one's ish better be correct. For a big part Tony's ish is on point.

He is hailing from Detroit. He will point that out in one of his tracks, but his music is very much universal. Going a well and self outlined route, his beats most of the times are smooth, they don't lack the sparkle of love to the detail here and there. But it's his lyrics where Tony is finally making his mark. While his flow is as bare and basic as beans to chilly, his dope content is saving the day. And right from the start, within the minutes of the "Intro", he tells it to us straight: this is some positive music. This is not using the n-word, this is not about: shoot 'em up, bling, bling. In the good old tradition of hip hop it does not fail in providing the obligatory battle rhyme though (check out "Battle Hymn" or "Stage Presence"), but it's also about the topics so many other people stray away from, because these issues actually ask the listener to think. And that's a entertainment 'no-no' it seems. Tony doesn't care. He puts an "If All Men Are Dogs" on this album too. And that track is only one of several positive and conscious tracks.

The keyboards are sometimes annoying, like on "360 Degrees", but most of the times, a lyrical (oftne sampled) hook takes the beat, that was drifting towards the wackness sea, back in the save haven of phatness. Also a track like "The Mitten" does not dedicate to any style, what can be a good thing, but in the end, this sounds like some old Louisiana gumbo, shaken up and then left unseasoned. The summer vibe of a "Highs And Lows" then picks up the pieces again, hands them to "iamwhatiam", that glues 'em together with a dope intro piano and a beat that sounds like something 2Pac would have rhymed over back in '93. And so cuts like the back in the day track "Momments" save the album, but still leave us in a confused state, cause we don't know how to fit a "No Boundaries" next to the old school ruggedness of a "Stage Presence", or the creative abstractness of "Midnight Awakening" and "Lyrical Endeavors". But the fact that Tony makes this all somehow mingle, not interfere with each other, it still cant provide an effortless adaptation.

It's hard to put this album in any category. Musically it does quite often tend to the Midwest flavor. But it's that trunk funk with a consciousness. Too many tracks with a message. Too many tracks that could easily be a thug hymn, are used in a positive way. But still, our ear is telling us, something's not right. Continuity? Too much elbow room between the highs and the lows? We don't know if we should smile or grill to this. And in the end, it's just that we are not used to that ISO standard. Either that or the album fails to have a common, constant and stable backbone, so that we can see where it's going. But still, we like the content, the musicality, the newness, the nextness. Maybe there are just too many keyboards on here. You probably better listen for yourself, because this review was only able to find the words to the things it didn't like but not to those it did like.