Def Jux has seen lots of success by taking the slot that Rawkus once held as New York City’s number one underground label, and has stayed close within a family unit of acts, such as El-P, RJD2, Aesop Rock, and Cannibal Ox. But their most unlikely signing yet comes all the way from the west coast with Murs, an underground “Living Legends”, who’s been putting it down for years with his Bay Area brethren. 

    While Murs’ first brush with the Def Jukies came from Siah & Yeshua Da Poed’s “Day Like No Other” 12-inch remix, with End Of The Beginning, Murs gets a full 18 tracks with the “DJX” stamp of approval. However, that doesn’t exactly mean that Murs has abandoned his Living Legends roots for the ever-popular “Def Jux sound”, as this album is a pretty even balance. 

    Murs and Aesop Rock’s sloppy-but-likable “Happy Pillz” will garner a few laughs from fans of either artists, while the double-time rhyme “The Dance” with El-Producto will simultaneously impress and silence critics before they even get a chance to speak (“Got you all up on your keyboard shunnin’ this shit.”). And while we’ve heard better beats from El-P (“Def Cover”) and RJD2 (“Sore Losers”), the best collaboration on the album actually comes from outside the Def Jux stable, with “Risky Business”, Murs take on the 80′s Tom Cruise classic, with the original freaks of the industry crashing the party, Digital Underground. With Shock’s production, along with the humorous 3-way narrative between Shock, Hump, and Murs, this is a classic tale that could have fit right in perfectly on Sex Packets. 

     Outside of these collabos, it’s pretty much back to basics for Murs fans, and as usual the man can do little wrong for his core audience. Murs is a cartoon character, split somewhere between the average joeisms of Slug and the Cali angst of Ice Cube, making for some pretty amusing rhymes. Check “Please Leave” where Murs angrily speaks from the perspective of a hip-hop fan watching his favorite artist slowly deteriorate with each album (LL? Kane? Cube? Pick your own), or “B.T.$. (Big Time Spender)”, where he contradictorily brags with west coast attitude about how he was first in line at K-Mart to buy Star Wars action figures the day of their release, or even “Transitionz Az A Rider”, where Murs does perhaps the first hip-hop song about skateboarding (at least by a Black guy). On the serious tip, Murs drops knowledge to his younger brother on “Brotherly Love”, or “The Scuffle”, where Murs shuts down studio gangsters and delivers a true dose of reality rap. 

      Despite a snoozer or two sprinkled throughout, Murs has got a pretty solid album on his hands, and it’s evident from this record that he can pretty much rap about anything. But it’s this same diversity that leaves this album sounding somewhat scatterbrained, given its long list of producers, especially following the last few, more cohesive conceptual records from the Def Jux catalog. While Murs may be somewhat of an acquired taste, fans of Legends and Def Jux will definitely meet in the middle of The End Of The Beginning.