Saturday, November 28, 2009

Felt 3 - A Tribute to Rosie Perez

















8/10

"Them Felt boys are back." I don't know if I've ever said this on here, but my absolute #1 favorite hip-hop group is Atmosphere, Slug (the rapper) and Ant (the producer). Felt takes Slug and pairs him with Murs, who is also pretty dope, although I never got into his solo stuff or Living Legends stuff. They have a different producer do each album, and make it a tribute to some sort of fallen star actress. So here we have Felt 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez, produced by Aesop Rock.

As far as Felt goes, in general, I just love the way that Slug and Murs seem to bounce off of each other. It's never really formulaic, like Slug Verse, Chorus, Murs Verse, Chorus. They go back and forth, and I love that. (It's what makes me excited for the Nas & Damian Marley album, Distant Relatives.) They're both great rappers, and they continue to show it here. Felt seems like a fun sort of release for Slug. A lot of the Atmosphere stuff is a little more serious and toned down, and Felt is where he can just have fun and say whatever he wants. It's really cool to hear another side of him. The production on the album is where it falls short, believe it or not. I really like Aesop Rock, he's a cool guy who does his own weird style of rap and pulls it off pretty well. And as much as I think a lot of the songs on the album are well-produced, they don't fit Slug and Murs. There are several points in the album where it sounded like the guys' flows didn't match the beats at all. It was like they didn't really know how to rap over some of the stuff that Aes gave them. Some of the songs sound great, and they match up well, but there's just those few that don't work. And it's not like they couldn't have cut them out. The album is a little too long for me, going just over an hour. I think cutting it down to 45-50 minutes would've really helped the flow. Personally, Felt 2 was my favorite, but that's really just because Ant (the other half of Atmosphere) produced the whole thing. Still, it's a good album, and definitely worth listening to.

Check out 2 of my favorites, the first single, "Protagonists", and "Henrietta Longbottom"

Protagonists

Henrietta Longbottom

No comments:

Post a Comment