Working as a “hold-us-over” project, Aceyalone and producer Elusive deliver the better late than never Hip-Hop And The World We Live In, a weekend experiment recorded somewhere around 2000-2001, now surfacing as an “indy shop only” gem for the fans. 

      Heads first got a taste of this release on the 12-inch single “Bigger They Come”, which showed yet-another-side of the accepted eclectic emcee, as Aceyalone silenced all those fakin’ jacks over Elusive’s southern synth and rolling pianos. On the flip was the paranoia filled “I Think I Know Too Much”, with trademark Project Blowed abstractions, captured perfectly in Elusive’s dark cello and keys concoctions. This track, like much of this release, follows close to Acey’s Book Of Human Language, with moody, murky Elusive production, as Acey follows stream of consciousness flows. Tracks like “Art Club”, which puts Acey-de-uno as the head of a pretentious poet society, and “Dirty Birdie”, where Acey confesses digging on materialistic dumb girls, shows his creativity over similar chopped up jazz samples, while joints like “Shooby Dooby” and “Rapps On Deck” attempt to get a bit more live with basic mic rocking over up tempo cellar-dwelling production.   

    However, the deeper you get into the album, the deeper we delve into the mouth of madness that Acey and Elusive have created. Things get stranger and stranger, and the insanity comes to a head on “Organic Electricity”, which is reminiscent of 2001 character Hal?s slow deterioration, where Acey seems to be on the same path. Given Acey’s train-of-thought rhyme style, unlike his previous works it’s hard to tell what his motivations are most of the time. Is he high out of his mind, brilliant, or both?

    While the experimentation here rivals that of Anti-Pop Consortium, Hip-Hop And The World We Live In may be too abstract of a record for most, but Acey and his team realize that, purposely making the distribution of this album limited, aimed only at the core fans. While this may not be Aceyalone’s strongest project to date, with two arguably classic solo records under his belt, not to mention Project Blowed and the first two Freestyle Fellowship albums, Aceyalone will never break his promise by falling off. With rumors of Acey collaborating with a list of def underground super-producers for the forthcoming Love and Hate, its only a matter of time before Aceyalone re-establishes himself as one of the underground’s best.