Eastern Conference seems to have an agenda to take the title that Rawkus once had as the definitive name in underground hip-hop. Building up their roster with talent they have displayed their abilities on several compilations and through several artists releases such as High & Mighty’s Air Force One, and more recently Cage’s Movies For the Blind. After winning much respect with these releases as well as a slew of compilations Eastern conference has done it again with the third installment of the Eastern Conference All Stars series.

The best thing about this compilation is that it hits hard. Although the songs don’t necessarily flow into each other they do all follow the same pattern of bringing incredibly hard hitting beats with dynamite lyricism laced on top. The album kicks off with an amazing banger from Tame One, the J-Zone produced “Tame As It Ever Was” with its swirling sounding loop and banging drums it’s bound to make you bob your head. Other highlights on here include cuts like the Weathermen’s “5 Left In The Clip” which just pulsates and practically forces your head to bob, and “Talk Like Sex Pt. II” by the Smut Peddlers, a song that will immediately set you that early 90′s golden age of hip-hop state of mind. The absolute jewel of this comp though has to be Cage’s “Ballad of Worms”, a twisted song in which Cage dedicates his love to a dead woman who happens to be his current flame. Eww. 

This album is the type of record that is destined to be in the car CD deck for months keeping heads bobbing while driving home from your 9-5. There are very few low points on this LP And 1, High & Mighty’s “And 1″ comes with a beat that doesn’t quite hit as hard as most others on this comp, but with Mr. Eon bringing the memories of NBA past its hard to say the song is bad. Not much else could be said about this comps low points it simply follows the formula of putting good hip-hop beats to good hip hop MC’s. More great examples of this are R.A. The Rugged Man’s roughneck themed song “Brawl” and Cage’s “Special Ladies”. Compilations seem to just come and come making most of them easy to forget. Hopefully this one will not be lost in the shuffle and be heralded along other masterpieces like Soundbombing 2. It definitely would be fitting for this Eastern Conference release to sit along side its Rawkus predecessor.