good album. feels like a long cypher with them in the basement just passing the mic around. vocally it sounds raw like that too..thats one big difference in this album from the original...
none of the tracks on this new album feel like "songs" to me...like Brown Skin Lady, Definition, Respiration...those are songs....these new joints just feel like tracks of them spitting. its top tier rhyming but i feels like theres nothing to most of what they're saying and the impact just isnt there.
Mos is clearly too good at rapping and thats why he sounds so "bored" on the record...i still think he sounds great and is an amazing MC but clearly he's above all of this...Kweli sounds hungry as fukk..another big difference between the new and old albums is Kweli's flow/delivery...he's not "off beat" like they used to say and his bars are stepped up here....he'll never compare to Mos but you can tell he's hungrier than him here....
i dont have many true gripes other than it just sounds like a long cypher but i do kinda wish Common or Pharoahe Monch had a feature.
when i saw Madlib was doing the beats i knew it was gonna be scaled back minimalist joints and the vocals are gonna sound live and raw.