The Boston scene can blow well enough on its own without the infamous and degrading controversy that surrounds The Almighty RSO/Made Men and The Source magazine.  Any publicity may be good publicity, but Boston heads have got to be damn tired of being remembered as the city that Guru left behind for the bright lights of New York.  Guess what?  The Kreators stand as the answer to the question, “Where your hip-hop at?”  Right here, dogg.

The diversely talented crew of Big Juan, G2, Jayson and XL are out to funk your head up with a guestlist that’s strictly local and production qualities that have nothing to do with Puff Daddy or DJ Premier .  That’s why their album is called “Foreign Lands” – it’s coming from a place you never heard of.  After spending some time with them though, you’ll be glad to visit AND stay a while.

Right away, “No Ordinary Love” cracks you over the head with a sample that would have the Jurassic 5  head nodding, some funny snaps like “uglier than Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple” and the welcome return of Roxbury’s own Ed O.G. Thematically the “do it for the love and not the funds” focus may be well tread by now, but you can’t help but smile when Ed says “G started rollin with God and stopped rollin with gats”.  Do the Made Men have an answer to that? 

A few tracks later, Ed shows up again on the piano-influenced “Spotlight”.  He shines but so do these Kreators – it’s not a star-powered upsmanship but rather a merger of Boston’s best rhyme heads on wax; and their chemistry is natural and automatic.  “Watch jealousy turn fellow MC to enemy – used to be a friend of me, want to see the end of me.”  This ain’t just playa haterism folks, this is exactly why Boston’s not yet had their chance to shine despite one of the nation’s strongest underground hip-hop scenes.

The closest thing to jiggy on this album would be the uptempo but still hardcore friendly “Who to Trust” that sounds like a merger between Knight Rider and “All About the Benjamins”.  This is not a bad thing since they punctuate the beat with keyboard fills that sound nothing like a Swizz Beatz production – which explains why on this song Jayson can brag “even if we miss we still amongst the stars.”

On this album, even the musical interludes like “Money” shine.  It makes you wish they had fleshed that Ol’ Dirty sample out into a full-fledged track.  By the time you reach “Truth or Game” at the end you’ve had seventeen tracks worth of music which gives you the feel of how long and hard Boston has been trying to come up, and just how long overdue it really is.  For the Y2G and beyond, The Kreators will definitely be a force to be reckoned with.