The sounds of neo-new school hip-hop usually resonate with avant-garde sounding beats and an even more avant-garde emcee’s rhyming over them. And for every five or so abstract “underground” LP’s you’ll find one that you can bob your head while cruising down the block; Soul Purpose’s (Zavi, Koncepts and Mazzi) Breaking Records certainly qualifies.

Many of the tracks on Breaking Records contain conscious messages, or topics, which predominantly deal with the growing pains that accompanies the growth process of most twenty-something’s; exemplified by “Minimum Wage” featuring the Juggaknots’ Breezly Brewin, where the crew flips the “trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents” mentality, but keeps their hustle legal and “Ballad of Lost Friends” which touches on the dissolution of childhood friendships. 

Though the mix between jazzy beats and neo-conscious rhyming is at times disconcerting, Zavi and Koncept blaze the title track, “Breaking Records” w/ Infamous MC and Kirby Dominant and the effort is further bolstered by guest shots from Pumpkinhead (“Take Cover!”), Breezly Brewin (“Minimum Wage”), Percee-P (“Lung-Collapsing Lyrics II”) and another contribution from Juggaknots’ Slim on “I Stay Busy”.

In short, Breaking Records is an homage to all the heads that grew up on Large Professor, Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul, and the ones that no matter how much hip-hop has changed, can still be found digging in the crates nearly a decade later.  While the crew’s over-ambitious nature (twenty-plus tracks) generates some unneeded filler, Soul Purpose’s hearts and minds are in the right place.