When did Canadian hip-hop stop doing their own thing and begin to clone NY? Maybe it’s been like that all along, but I never remembered Saukrates and Frankenstein being as blandly familiar as Solitair is on his new single. “No Doubt” is duller than a butter knife with its simplistic track and Solitair’s not spittin’ anything [cont.]

One of the few Makin artists that seemed to have survived the label’s implosion, Bad Seed  makes out just fine on “For The Kids”. Someone might want to compare this to the “Hard Knock Life” school of tracks that just jack some Broadway song riff, but that doesn’t quite capture the feel of “For the Kids” [cont.]

Damn, who are these kids? Rattling off lyrics like they’re going head-to-head with Rakim circa ’88, the Scum team of Insight and T-Ruckus bombard you with verses and a blaxploitated funk guitar loop on “Scum Live”. “Slug Fest” continues the verbal attack, this time over a driving, horn loop that’s as frenetic as Scum’s lyric pacing. And just [cont.]

My only beef with this 4-song EP is that 3/4ths of it isn’t radio friendly. Otherwise, it’s yet another sign that Fondle Em rarely makes poor choices in its artist relationships. Dunno who this kid is, but while some think he sounds like Cage, I never noticed, never cared. He’s the type of MC to serve [cont.]

Afu Ra’s track record on 12″s off his LP has been a little uneven. The first one, with “D&D Soundclash” and “Mic Stance” was blasting like a .44. “Defeat” wasn’t even a .22 – more like a slingshot with a broken rubber band. “Bigacts Littleacts” fits in somewhere halfway. The two sides are split between [cont.]

Gang Starr’s Step In the Arena is widely credited as one of the first albums to really pioneer a jazz/hip-hop fusion but people got it slightly wrong.  Sure, DJ Premier sampled jazz songs to make some of the tracks for Arena but his innovation was taking the jazzy and making it funky. In comparison to the [cont.]