From the virus that is hip-hop, we are seeing new breeds of music evolve from what essentially started off in the park with two turntables and a mic. Fat Jon and his Five Deez crew have always been a bit off the beaten path, mixing standard boom bip styles with earthy mood music, for the most part achieving dope results. With Jon’s new project, The Same Channel, he teams up with electronic producer/ rock vocalist, Styrofoam, to create a unique - albeit flawed - cross-genre record. 

    The album begins with the catchy “Acid Rain Robot Repair”, a perfectly executed between the two artists, where Jon rhymes over the up-tempo spaced-out electro-funk, as Foam lends softly song indie rock vocals, complete with vocoder. A pair of cooled out, dark, new wave influenced tracks come in the form of “Bleed” and “Runnin’ Circles”, which again find the two artists trading verses back and forth. “Upgrade” packs hard hitting funk drums, as Jon raps about changing technologies and Foam lends his breezy vocals. “Scream It Out” instead packs a more cosmic slop influence, with sticky baselines and computerized sound effects, finding the two exchanging random vocals that lend more the music itself, rather than worrying about making any sense.  

     But it’s not all pulled off so perfectly. The cheesy “Space Gangsta” might be the most marketable song on the record - at least as a single - however it comes off as something like a bad Dr. Octagon…*Two*…. leftover. Secondly, the last arc of the 12-track album spends way too much time exploring the meditative qualities of the two artists’ styles. Each “The Middle”, “Generic Genes”, and “Upgrade (Remix)” combine for a sleep inducing seventeen minute closing of the LP. By the time it’s over, you either want to drift off to dreamland, or are so frustrated that you badly need some M.O.P. or Lil’ Jon.   

    This post-Gorillaz-but-not-quite-Daft-Punk collaboration is kind of like what people in the 80′s imagined rap would be like in the future - and that’s a good thing, even if that’s not really the case. It’s definitely creative and forward thinking, and good for listeners who think they’ve heard it all, despite it’s minor missteps.