The title track “Life Story” is exactly what you’d expect – a smooth flowing beat where Rob describes his childhood growing up and the hard knocks. “Drive By” continues the narrative in a fashion that would make Kool G Rap  proud before being followed by a most welcome guest appearance of Cee Lo on “Lookin’ At Us”. “Down the Line” seems a bit confusing though. Besides featuring the departed Mase and an unfortunate rap by Puffy, the song title has nothing to do with the chorus whatsoever. Fortunately the next track is the first single Bad Boy released from this album last year; the Harve Pierre sung “You Don’t Know Me”. The apparent simplicity of the song belies his ability to paint a portrait of racial profiling that goes on even South of the border. “We out to Mexico, for a fun-filled weekend/At least I thought I was, they had the whole place strung/ Still thinkin’ I sold drugs, ice ‘em up/Kick the door in, I find Satan/From up top, bullets soaring, but I fake ‘em.”

Again, it’s a bit surprising to hear an ex-Bad Boy affiliate on the album, as The L.O.X. are all over the mix-tape favorite “Can I Live” – (and no, not the same version as appeared on We Are the Streets). The piano laced beat and Rob’s gruff voice along with the smooth Yonkers flowing thugs is an excellent combination and almost makes you wish they had formed a group together. For some reason though, the silly tradition that Puffy started with his Tiger Woods skit on “Mo Money Mo Problems” is continued with “Championship”. Like most skits on any album (but especially Bad Boy) it’s totally unnecessary. On the same note, “PD World Tour” would be a lot better without the Puffster. For some reason, Puffy’s lack of talent wasn’t as annoying on Biggie’s albums, but here it’s radiant.

Overall, this may be the most surprising album to come out on Bad Boy this year, but shares an unfortunate tendency to have rehashed and already released material. Despite this, it’s definitely an album worth peeping because of Black Rob’s excellent storytelling and good production throughout.

If you’re familiar with the Living Legends and the Mystik Journeymen, you already know his repertoire. The Grouch has a successful following in underground rap circles; and he carefully cultivates that beneath the surface rap audience. Record for a major label? Make a pop record? “Wait I drop heavy shit, always ever-ready with the verse to kick in any situation, admit you taste the delicacy – man there’s no way else to call it.” Nah, The Grouch is obviously not on that commercial shit, even if on songs the previously quoted “Every Day Is Saturday” he’s willing to quote from the hip-hop and pop lexicon.

The Grouch stands out from the crowd though both musically (his album is almost entirely self-produced) and lyrically. Many indie rappers are automatically suspect – full of their own egos for saying “fuck the establishment” while making wack records that even the Madd Rapper himself, could shit on. The Grouch on the other hand is a student of his craft and his own psyche. On tracks like “Trust Yourself” with PSC and “Grown Up” he’s serious about being true to self and putting his “brain on beats.”

The critics are already standing at the end of the alley with a bowling ball to knock down his ten pins – it ain’t hard, it ain’t that ghetto shit, he’s some nerdy rapper. In his own words, “call him hypocrite, because my lips can spit truth.” The Grouch refuses to play the role. He’s real, and that’s what makes him funky. That’s why you’ll enjoy the groove AND the lyrics on songs like “Strange Body”, “Simple Man”, and the humorous “Zip It” (also featuring PSC and Murs). He may have an angry name but his own liner notes say it all: “to hell with all negative energy”. The Grouch’s vibes make perfect sense.

Musically, this album is a smorgasboard of different tastes and flavors. Mums The Word provides an airy light feel on tracks like “Stand Still” and “Reach”, Key Kool has hardcore old-school swing on songs like “LA Fresh” and “Self Sufficient”, and the rest of his Beat Junkies crew flex throughout – DJ Babu, J-Rocc, and DJ Rhettmatic each taking turns at the beat. Despite the diversity the sound is very coherent.

As for the wordplay, it’s hard to find fault with their style – progressive lyricism that owes a debt to the stylings of Aceyalone (obvious on “Come One Come All”) but stays true to the hardcore L.A. roots (the homage to Ice Cube/N.W.A. on “Self Sufficient”) for a combination that is pleasant and never boring to listen to. Some may have mistaken this rap group for the “God Squad” on the basis of earlier songs like “Audible Angels”, “Rejoice and Praise” and “Pope Mobile” – but their steelo is much broader and deeper. If anything can be said about their higher calling, it’s that they don’t feel a deep-seated need to swing their balls and call shots on every track – that’s a more than welcome change in a hip-hop world drowning in testosterone. Yet at the same time, this kind of righteousness, along with the Visionaries’ dictionary approved pronunciation styles, may turn off those who enjoy ghetto style ebonics and harder deliveries currently dominating the rap scene.

But as a total package, Visionaries’ Sophomore Jinx is anything but – it’s a successful and progressive return of a crew that is upbeat without being Will Smith and edgy without being DMX. While the experimental styles of the L.A. underground may soar over some heads in the hip-hop audience, the Visionaries do a good job of catching the attention spans of underground listeners worldwide.

That said, it’s obvious they decided that as long as the album was going to be called Superrappin’ that they’d BETTER do it right by enlisting the best beatmasters of indie hip-hop — and so they did., as you’ll be feeling these grooves. Shawn J. Period laces a real gem for El Da Sensei on his solo debut, accompanied by the likes of Mike Zoot , F.T. (Fuc That) of Street Smartz, and Organized Noize on “Frontline”. Ed O.G. gets put on the scene again with some excellent help courtesy DJ Spinna on “Let’s Be Realistic”. Brixx gets some help from Mos Def on the rhymes and Mr. Walt (Beatminerz) on the beats on “If It’s Alright Y’all”; Consequence and friends rip open the ’99 soundclash “Nobody”; The ever improving Cali Agents , Rasco and Planet Asia ask “How Many X’s”; and and so on. There’s very little on this collection that isn’t at least above average musically, and some of it is so excellent that it will just get you WIDE OPEN.

As for the rhymes, there’s no reason to front — these are indeed some Super Rappin MC’s.  If you follow independent hip-hop you probably know a lot of these names already: Choclair , High & Mighty , Lootpack , Punch & Words , The Jigmastas, – et cetera.  Even the unfamiliar names got something to spark.  Eddie Brock drops a clever joint full of alliteration on “Relax, Relate, Release (R^3)”; while Mathematik flows smoothly with Philly femme fatale Bahamadia on “Following Goals”.  Most of the rhymes are so good that in the words of High & Mighty, “even hard rocks say that kid was nice”.

There’s no reason to front on this album. If you love independently produced hip-hop from MC’s who explode with flavor like a Starburst, then this collection can quench your cravings. Big ups to Groove Attack for getting all these people in the same place at one time for one album. Get this joint and show your love for the next generation of hip-hop’s most Super-Rappers and Producers.

This philosophy shows what the underground does best – they respect the audience, and the audience blesses them with loyalty in return. In indie circles you’ll find few rated higher than D-Stroy, Q-Unique, Swel, Jise, and Freestyle. This album is a decision not to disappoint that stature by combining strong flows with acidic beats. This album has not been propped up with crossover remixes by Clark Kent or jeep anthems by DJ Premier – it’s self-produced and just like Organized Konfusion’s debut LP, meant to be that way. It wouldn’t sound as fresh otherwise.

The only thing which could potentially throw a curveball in their strike zone is the fact their steelo is mostly braggadocio. When you drop the kind of gems they do in “The Session” though, it’s hard to argue with that approach. Check Q-Unique’s wordplay:

“Poetical pack a punch like De La Hoya I’m switchin’ up the format, like Just-Ice did LaToya Slammin’ like Olujawon, rhymin’ like a marathon, on and on Forever it’s the 17th Letter, comin’ better”

If you can’t argue with the verbals and you like microphone gymnastics, then the only factor to swing a thumbs up or down on is the beats. This plate is not empty – it’s fat and loaded with calories. “Backdraft” simmers on an open flame; “Shit Ain’t Sweet” is tempered by an ominous 8-key piano loop; “Blaze” could easily pass for one of RZA ‘s best offerings, “Frienemies” is a sinister offering about peeps that play both sides; “Shaboing” has a pulsing migraine inducing bassline, and one of the best and most humerous tracks is “Rhyme Time Travel” where the Arsonists journey through hip-hop history and blend into each decade’s dominant New York style. The only song which might collide with common sense is “Pyromaniax”, which freaks a loop from the Sony Playstation game “Tomba” and comes off as almost silly in the process – you’ll either think it’s funny or hate it to death. Stylistically though it doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the album, either way.

In terms of 1999′s best underground releases, this should rate right up their with Mountain Brothers’ Self Vol. 1 and Peanut Butter Wolf’s My Vinyl Weighs a Ton. Lovers of pure up raw East Coast would be ESPECIALLY hard pressed to hate on it; although for this very reason it probably won’t crossover well on the Left Coast or Dirty South except on college radio. No shame in that if you make a good album and represent correctly with the elements. You may not hear it bumping in the jeeps or setting it off at the disco, but lift up your boy’s headpiece and you just might catch the vibes as “Worlds Collide” floating up from the eardrums. It’s addictive, hypnotic, and bound to cause SNS — Sore Neck Syndrome.

It’s hard to accuse Lil’ Cease of being anything other than he is. Even before jiggy rap became cliche, he was jiggy. Lil’ Cease probably suffers more from bad timing than a bad record. This record is superficial, but judged on the basis of “make you dance” music it’s better than the average. This is the kind of album you could throw on in the background at a party and leave running from start to finish while people dance. Repackaging beaten to death classics like “Trans-Europe Express”, “Super Hoe”, and “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” into millenium music for the clubs. Sometimes, that’s all you want.

If anything (else) about this album is tiresome, it’s how Puff Daddy and Lil’ Cease constantly pay homage to the memory of the late great Christopher Wallace (Notorious B.I.G.) One gets the feeling his guardian angel must be standing over their shoulders with a spiked bat, threatening to bash the heads of anyone who refuses to pay tribute. The best tributes are always unstated, such as Busta Rhymes invoking lyrics from “Warning” on the song “More Dangerous”. For Puffy to say B.I.G. lives through him after he won a six figure bidding war to sign Shyne is automatically suspect. Save it, and let the rappers rap. Stop beating us over the head with your guilty conscience. It wouldn’t need mentioning if Puff himself would SHUT UP – he says “B.I.G. forever” on damn near every track he’s on.

The best songs on the album, unsurprisingly, are the ones with cameo guest appearances. Redman turns “Future Sport” into the album’s most grimy cut, “Play Around” teases us with a taste of Lil Kim, and Jay-Z does his thing as u-sual on “4 My Niggaz”. Even “Need a Lady” with Puffy does what Bad Boy does best: smooth R&B with hardcore vocals. The tightly polished R&B groove sounds like a cross between Whodini and Cameo. This would make a great choice for the second single. “Girlfriend” with Ma$e is in the same vein, but less tolerable due to the retard’s mic time.

Ultimately, this album is what it is. It’s nothing that will turn heads with Cease’s mind-blowing lyricism or stop cats in their tracks with next level beats – it’s just some have fun and shake yo’ ass shit. And judged on that basis, it’s preferable to Mase, Puffy, Foxy Brown, or Black Rob. The beats are better, and Cease kicks his ish competently.

For starters, there’s the collaborative cut “Rainmen” by the Deep Puddle Dynamics. A heavy grooving bassline is the only thing that cements the lyrics to the track, but with lyrics like “you’re lost, between mold, and the mildew/if you spit that verse with bullets and tits I wouldn’t feel you” it really doesn’t NEED anything else. Brutal? You bet. In Sole’s own words, “walkin the fine fabric of time between Neitzche and Ice Cube, fuck alla y’all, never liked any of y’all in the first place.” Worrrrrrd.

“Savior?” rocks this same flavor, which seems to be what Anticon does best – collaborative groups over heavy bass. This time, Eyedea, Slug, and Sole split the mic time. Not really for the casual listener, this song is a deep meditation on self-awareness. Slug sums this up by saying, “Sometimes I reflect, sit, and wish that I was ignorant/ unaware of the poison, so I could enjoy sippin it” while Eyedea begs “for the mothership spacecraft to take me away from this purposeless Earth/shit it’s worthless”. This is hip-hop on a scale of pessimism previously unimagined.

Some of these songs though fail on the same basis “It’s Them” by Them attempts to syncopate each word with the beat, and then fade vocally in and out with the music, and then.. well, it’s just overreaching. It’s technically well executed, but it comes off forced. “Simulated Snow”. by Sixtoo actually has the same problem: he starts the second verse alliterating and just seems to be trying too hard, and his vocal has Guru’s monotone without his redeeming qualities.

Surprisingly, most of the albums lightest and dare I say happiest moments come during the interludes, apparently scratched by DJ Signify (the only Anticon turntablist credited in the liner notes). These songs plus his solo “Meditations” leave you yearning for more. Ultimately, this album both succeeds and fails for the same reason: it’s HEAVY. After hearing Buck 65 rap about wallowing in his own drunken pity, you may actually want to listen to a Mack 10 record just to cheer up. Sometimes the heavy- handedness works; most often on cuts featuring Sole, their most able and freeform lyricist. At other times, they just seem to be trying too hard to be morbid.

This is the kind of release in only seven short songs that most rap soloists and crews wish they could come up with in bulky blathering thirty cut double discs of mindless drivel. Sometimes, shorter is better – especially when you can pack this much flavor into this condensed of a space. Proving that point aptly is the title cut “A to G” where Gab proves his ability to alliterate aptly; then flips it at the album’s end with “Alphabet Aerobics (The Cut Chemist 2 & 1/2 Minute Workout)”, which forces Gab to up-tempo his flow everytime the beat is picked up – except this time he goes all the way from A to Z. Zounds!

Gab isn’t one of those one-dimensional rappers that’s just out to prove how clever he is with his tongue. “Deception” is an examination of how the fast road to success can be a quick road to downfall, and “Making Progress” is a heartfelt dedication to all his people struggling to make a better life for themselves. Gab has an extrordinary ability to sound matter of fact – never preachy or didactic – so you won’t mind when he says, “Can’t achieve a a garden if you never water your crops/If you never paid your dues, then you don’t get props.” Gab never aims any barbs at others that he wouldn’t aim at himself so this comes across as much as a self-reminder as advice.

A fan of hip-hop for advanced listening would be hard-pressed not to enjoy this musical menagerie. Chief Xcel’s sonic production deftly compliments Gab’s liquid smooth voice and provides the appropriate sound backdrop for whatever topic is addressed. Of this release one can only be left mouth-watering for the fuller length Nia from which these jewels of excellence were culled. Picking up this and the previous Melodica EP would both be a very good decision.

Ugly Ducking may be a comical name for this crew, but it’s definitely a misnomer - nothing about this EP is ugly. Self-produced and featuring DJ scratches by Young Einstein; this crew’s Mode is made of witty rhymes and snappy beats. “Now Who’s Laughin’” is an ideal example: two different pianos loops are laid over a boom-kick and snare that leaves groove riders salivating, and references to classic shit that will crack a smile to any hip-hop head that’s in the know. The only downside of this song is that at two minutes and fifty seconds long, it’s too short!

“..provide a way to get from point A to point B, so I can see, my way through this Stratego / I gotta put the group before my ego / cause sometimes we bump heads like NFL linemen..” – Dizzy Dustin, “Get on This”

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about the Mode of Fresh that Ugly Duckling displays is their constant stream (of conciousness) references to their favorite rap records. The crew displays this devotion to rap’s true school on “Do You Know What I’m Sayin?” by intermingling classic lines from KRS-ONE, K-Solo, and Big Daddy Kane one right after another and changing up the endings with clever word substitution.

“..in the end times, breakin it down like enzymes, to package and send rhymes / to another galaxy, as a proton - I split ‘em into catastrophe, and so on, and so on..” – Andy Cooper, “Everything’s Alright”

I’ll even let Andy get away with flipping Nas’ rhyme from “Live at the BBQ” - he changes it to “when I was twelve, I went to heaven for lovin Jesus”. What? Nah kid, go ‘head with your good self. You can’t blame them for being positive when they’re so positively Fresh.

The diversely talented crew of Big Juan, G2, Jayson and XL are out to funk your head up with a guestlist that’s strictly local and production qualities that have nothing to do with Puff Daddy or DJ Premier .  That’s why their album is called “Foreign Lands” – it’s coming from a place you never heard of.  After spending some time with them though, you’ll be glad to visit AND stay a while.

Right away, “No Ordinary Love” cracks you over the head with a sample that would have the Jurassic 5  head nodding, some funny snaps like “uglier than Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple” and the welcome return of Roxbury’s own Ed O.G. Thematically the “do it for the love and not the funds” focus may be well tread by now, but you can’t help but smile when Ed says “G started rollin with God and stopped rollin with gats”.  Do the Made Men have an answer to that? 

A few tracks later, Ed shows up again on the piano-influenced “Spotlight”.  He shines but so do these Kreators – it’s not a star-powered upsmanship but rather a merger of Boston’s best rhyme heads on wax; and their chemistry is natural and automatic.  “Watch jealousy turn fellow MC to enemy – used to be a friend of me, want to see the end of me.”  This ain’t just playa haterism folks, this is exactly why Boston’s not yet had their chance to shine despite one of the nation’s strongest underground hip-hop scenes.

The closest thing to jiggy on this album would be the uptempo but still hardcore friendly “Who to Trust” that sounds like a merger between Knight Rider and “All About the Benjamins”.  This is not a bad thing since they punctuate the beat with keyboard fills that sound nothing like a Swizz Beatz production – which explains why on this song Jayson can brag “even if we miss we still amongst the stars.”

On this album, even the musical interludes like “Money” shine.  It makes you wish they had fleshed that Ol’ Dirty sample out into a full-fledged track.  By the time you reach “Truth or Game” at the end you’ve had seventeen tracks worth of music which gives you the feel of how long and hard Boston has been trying to come up, and just how long overdue it really is.  For the Y2G and beyond, The Kreators will definitely be a force to be reckoned with.

Mudkids also put a little spirituality into the mix. It won’t really throw you off at all. They still cuss and fuss like every other rapper, they just want you to know that “killin and illin is no way to accomplish your dreams” as the rap on “Serpents Inna Mi Garden” illustrates; an excellent collaboration with MC’s Kontent and Arrange.

This crew’s most appealing song is undoubtedly “Water to Earth (H2O)” as a variety of aquatic, naval, oceanic and liquid rhymes are flipped that would make even Ras Kass catch feelings about getting wet. Not just knee deep, this is 20,000 leagues of bass and rhyme below most up and coming crews in hip-hop.

I understand a healthy skepticism in today’s hip-hop: how many new artists can really be dope when there are so many new rap crews and so many releases, both indie and major? But don’t be afraid to get down and dirty with the Mudkids.