Few emcees have been more celebrated in the past decade than Talib Kweli. The Brooklyn rapper rose relatively quickly from his underground fame at Rawkus to becoming fairly well recognized among the mainstream dwellers. Despite the fact that his most “underground” record (Reflection Eternal’s Train of Thought), is his best selling, Talib has spent his last 3 solo albums trying to buck stereotypes and make the music that his core fans don’t think he should be making. The result has been inconsistent albums that don’t come near his potential as an artist.

It may have been a ridiculous elitist notion that he shouldn’t work with The Neptunes, but those fans were right as the results were atrocious. Instead of just doing what he does best, Kweli was too busy trying to shed his backpacker label and that only succeeded in doing one thing; hurting the music. Eardrum, thankfully, has Kweli comfortable in his own skin and making the kind of music everyone but him knew he should have been making all along. Even better, he has improved tremendously in the other areas of emceeing. While he has been unquestionably a premier lyricist, his flow and delivery in the past has often been awkward at best and horrific at worst.

Kweli opens with Everything Man, an understated and soulful Madlib production and sounds right at home. He finishes off his usual visceral rhymes with a telling line; “I tried to fit it in the same rhyme/but realized I couldn’t be everything to everyone at the time.” With the proceeding songs, that is just what he does. Sticking to his comfort zone without skimping on the panache, Talib breezes through the album with remarkable consistency (and skill of course). The build up to NY Weather Report is type ill, and Talib does his part with lines like; “you ain’t a rider and you hustlin backwards/too many equate success with imitatin these crackas/so our kids lookin up to drug dealers and rappers.” He hooks up with Just Blaze again for the LP’s gem, the choir filled Hostile Gospel. It’s his new Get By without sounding like it is trying to be (unlike I Try from Beautiful Struggle).

Never one needing guests to help rip a song, Kweli still calls on some friends to put their touch on things. Jean Grae comes through to talk smack on the energetic Say Something. Country Cousins with UGK is a real bright spot for Kweli as he rips his verse with a little southern flow. The best collab comes when a legendary lyricist joins the soon to be legend. KRS and Talib just dismantle The Perfect Beat. Can’t forget the obligatory Kanye appearance on In The Mood, which is cool, but a bit of a letdown as it isn’t one of the albums strongest tracks.

While Talib may not really need help for a hot 16, he is served well by some help on the hooks (as most rappers are). There are no shortage of vocalists lending their chops to Ear Drum. The best comes in the form of Norah Jones’ sultry hook on the incredible Madlib-produced Soon The New Day. Not to be forgotten is the sole Reflection Eternal joint and mixtape favorite More or Less, featuring the usual Talib magic and Dion killing the hook. The always reliable will.i.am (well, when it isn’t his own song), comes through for Hot Thing, which is just so smooth. Even the Musiq Soulchild-assisted Oh My Stars that starts out hella soft ends up been real funky.

Unfortunately, the dream team with Talib hooking up with Pete Rock for a couple tracks ends up fizzling out. Holy Moly is alright, but nothing to write home about, and Stay Around is butchered by Kweli’s terrible flow. Ironically, the very same song where he bitches about fans telling him what to do, including “you should rap on beat.” Uhh, yeah. Just as he says himself on the blazing Kwame production; Listen.

Ideally this album is between a 4 and a 4.5, but since we don’t have 4 and a quarter and Common’s superior album got a 4.5 this is what we’ve got. There is still room for improvement, but this largely the album from Kweli that everyone has been waiting for. He sticks to production that fits his style rather than try and force himself outside of the box, and pens an album full of lyrics that remove any doubt as to why he has the reputation that he does. Other aspects of his emcee game may leave something to be desired at times, but anyone with functioning ear drums should know that this man is one of the greatest writers of our generation. Just listen.

-HipHopDX.com

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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For all intents and purposes, the White Stripes appeared to be defunct in 2006, put on hiatus while Jack White gallivanted the globe with Midwestern pals the Raconteurs. The previous year’s Get Behind Me Satan, commercial success that it was, sounded in retrospect like a man frustrated with his duo’s limited options, fiddling with more keyboards and pedals than previous Stripes LPs. Coupled with White’s perceptible glee at the Raconteurs’ expanded sonic palette and shared frontman duties– not to mention the more diverse wardrobe options– some thought it unlikely he’d don the red and white again any time soon.

Icky Thump, then, is a bit of a resurrection: Reuniting with Meg gives Jack the opportunity to slip back into sister-lover character, get his weird clothes out of attic, and return to basement blues. After the straightforward radio-rock trappings of the Raconteurs, Icky Thump packs an unexpected freshness, even given its back-to-basics premise; had it come immediately after Satan, it could have seemed like a cynical, regressive gift to the core fanbase, but following Broken Boy Soldiers, it recaptures a sense of goofy fun and a caustic edge that the duo haven’t possessed since White Blood Cells launched them to the A-list.

Recorded over what qualifies as a marathon session for the Stripes (a whole three weeks), Icky Thump re-assembles most of the scrap-heap elements that characterized the White Stripes’ pre-fame trilogy: grimy garage-blues, a left-field cover, bizarre spoken-word bits, and shameless Zeppelin and Dylan cues. The most obvious breaking development is White’s instrument sound– its tones are so aggressively tweaked that it’s hard to tell whether he’s playing a guitar that sounds like a keyboard or a keyboard being played like a guitar (prediction for the next White Stripes album gimmick: keytar).

The leadoff title track declares this territory nicely, alternating an overdriven, tortured organ with savage guitar jabs, and already proving a better integration of keys and frets than Satan’s marimba experiments. “I’m Slowly Turning Into You” blends Wurlitzer verses with fuzz-guitar choruses almost seamlessly; “St. Andrew (The Battle Is in the Air)” finds White facing off against bagpipes (yes, bagpipes) with chainsaw seizures; and on “Conquest”, he trades shrieking Casio tones with a trumpeter.

Yet, Icky Thump also treats us to a band that once again seems comfortable with its broken-in sounds, from the reverb-thud hammer of “Little Cream Soda” and the British Invasion 12-bar of “300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues” to the back-porch ditty of “Effect & Cause”. Perennially dismissed, Meg White once again puts the lie to the theory that John Bonham like totally made Led Zeppelin bro, squeezing the most from her limited repertoire and unsteady tempo when locking in with Jack on classic Stripes-stomp breakdowns like the one in “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)”, where raw talent takes a backseat to chemistry. The duo’s effortless dynamic on “Bone Broke” dismisses the garage-rock trend starting to tiresomely re-bubble yet again amongst the indie dregs, showing that world tours haven’t taken them too far away from sweaty suburban Detroit house-parties.

But unlike most other 10th-time-around blues-rock revivalists, the Stripes don’t settle for endlessly rewriting “96 Tears”, as the record’s two weirdest (and maybe best) cuts prove. “Conquest”, with its theatrical vocal and faux-mariachi fanfares, teases a promising revved-up early Scott Walker direction until you realize that it’s a meticulous recreation of the Patti Page original. “Rag & Bone” with its spoken-word verses, is practically a thesis statement for a band that loves to write songs about itself, casting Jack and Meg as junk collectors with a way-creepy relationship, prone to amphetamine rambles and big, chunky rock choruses.

If there’s a complaint to be registered about Icky Thump, it’s that certain aspects of the Stripes’ early character appear to have been annexed off: The sweet pop of “You’re Pretty Good Lookin’ (For a Girl)” would probably be Raconteurs property nowadays, and White’s country dalliances (i.e. “Hotel Yorba”) are totally absent. Revisiting old territory also carries with it the hazard of backward comparison, and the highest highs of Icky can’t quite reach the altitude of the band’s breakthrough singles, but some of that inadequacy is tempered by the group’s more robust sound– De Stijl now feels anorexic in a side-by-side taste-test. Whether it was remembering their own advice from “Little Room” or the freedom to write in another mode with the Raconteurs, White’s strategy worked its rejuvenating magic, allowing the Stripes to roll back the stone on Icky Thump.

-Rob Mitchum from Pitchfork Media

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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Don’t miss out on these upcoming CD releases next week!

Aesop Rock	None Shall Pass
Angels Of Light	We Are Him
Concentrick	Aluminum Lake
The Howling Hex	XI
Lyle Lovett	It’s Not Big It’s Large
New Young Pony Club	Fantastic Playroom
Pseudosix	Pseudosix
Matt White	Best Days

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The Starting Line recently released their third, full-length CD entitled “Direction“ on Virgin Records. This band is typically falls into the “pop punk” category with memorable, up-beat songs and a few harder rock songs mixed in. Their latest CD falls right in line with their previous records with the same types of songs.

The first track and title track of the CD, “Direction“, starts a little harder than the average Starting Line song but moves along and sounds great. The first single released from this record is track #4 “Island” and has been very popular on the radio. Track #6 features a much more mellow, almost acoustic track titled “Something Left to Give”. It may be a little too soft for some Starting Line fans but is a nice break in the CD and definitely plays to the large group of female and younger fans. The remaining tracks are all good, but nothing has stuck out as being memorable after listening to this record a few times over.

Personally, “Direction“ comes after “Say It Like You Mean It“ but before “Based On A True Story“ in my order of Starting Line favorites. “Say It Like You Mean It“ was almost perfect overall. “Based On A True Story“ had some of my favorite Starting Line tracks like “Surprise, Surprise” and “Inspired By The $” but the rest of the CD was just so-so. Overall, this is another great release from The Starting Line and if you’ve enjoyed their previous 2 records, this one will not disappoint.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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-YouReviewMusic.com Team

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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