A lot has changed in Hip-Hop since the Ultramagnetic MC’s seminal debut, Critical Beatdown, and the release of their new album, The Best Kept Secret: a fact that is apparent by just comparing the covers of the two albums. In the nearly 20 years (old school heads, take a minute to check for gray hairs) between the two releases, the underground movement that Ultramagnetic essentially started by openly mocking popular acts like Run D.M.C., has become a burgeoning scene where rappers can be buried in obscurity or rise up through the ranks and crossover to stardom.

    The Ultramagnetic MC’s pick an odd time to reenter the game, with the paradigms having shifted from gold chains and “show and prove” battle rhyme templates over James Brown samples, to a rap world dominated by talk of drugs, guns and money over dark synthesizer lines. So what is the influential group to do? Release a throwback that brings fans back to the glory days of “Ego Trippin?” or tiptoe unknowingly into a rap world that is barely recognizable for the quartet?

    Right away, the MC’s show they favor the latter with the dark, rumbling horns and spacey sound effects of “The Plaques”. Kool Keith, who may be incapable of rhyming about anything that makes sense, stays true to his off color personality, but Ced-Gee and the rest of the group sound much less convincing talking about ultrahard, generic modern rap archetypes and end up coming across as boring and uncreative.

     The reoccurring theme of overly basic production, uninspired lyrics and out of date references plagues the album and really makes for an uneven and difficult listen. It’s tough to sound hard when you open up a track claiming, “This shit is bananas,” when the last artist to use the phrase was Gwen Stefani. And nothing, nothing, nothing excuses possibly the worst hook of the last decade on “Late Night Rumble” Other letdowns include the monotonous whine and bizarre lyrics of  “Underwear Pissy” and the clear attempt at a club record with “Party Started”, with a beat that sounds like a ringtone from one of the old huge Nokia phones. 

  To be fair, The Best Kept Secret, despite all its weak points isn’t entirely awful. Surprisingly, some of the production shines, like on the fresh, airy sounding “Mechanism Nice” or the funky wah-wah guitar and the slow, bouncy horns of “Porno Star Part 2″. Plus, it’s admittedly a little refreshing to hear Keith spit about crazy, colorful, images as if he was reading hieroglyphics. The real problem though, is the disc’s inconsistency to deliver even a single quality song. Every time it seems the MC’s might present something worthwhile, its ruined by either a meaningless verse or one of the album’s many atrocious, mindless hooks.

     Really, the problem that the group is struggling with most is that they are not relevant enough to make an album that truly reflects their proven strengths, not versatile enough to cross over and be a force in today’s rap scene, and not creative enough to find an effective hybrid between their past sound and the present popular sounds in Hip-Hop. The album sounds tired and overplayed even on the first listen, continuously only meriting disappointment. It won’t win the group any new fans and their old fans won’t be able to help feeling let down. While their legacy will eternally be preserved through the importance of Critical Beatdown in Hip-Hop history: The Best Kept Secret is something Kool Keith, Ced Gee, Moe Luv, and TR Love should have kept private: this group has lost all of its magnetism.