Calliope Music Rapid Reviews
El Michels Affair & Black Thought - Glorious Game
Philadelphia MC, Black Thought Collaborates with New York Psych Band, El Michels Affair for Tranquil East Coast Evocations and Crystalline Conscious Hip-Hop.
Warm summertime instrumentals fit with soul samples and vinyl fuzz give a nostalgic taste to advanced wordplay and eloquent rhyme schemes. Black Thought skillfully reflects on home, love and self-improvement through slick rhythm rapping and heavy acoustics.
Instrumentally, the first half of the album lacks total distinctiveness, but picks up in exploratory quality with smooth samples and deft tempo changes. El Michels Affair provides a deep sense of remembrance through funk and soul drum licks, vocal chops and guitar samples.
The theme of reminiscence is amplified with Black Thought's rapping, where he discharges an expansive vocabulary regarding Philadelphia and pop culture. A confident, but introspective cadence paints pictures of love and fear, exploring simple concepts with prodigious imagery. Black Thought writes this mental imagery no better than on the track, 'The Weather,' where the simplicity of warm weather brings him back to an immaculately vivid picture of his hometown.
Although Glorious Game isn't blazing any new trails for East Coast Hip-Hop, it is certainly an authoritative take on the genre, where the duo radiates a magisterial control over lyricism and old-school production.
Best Tracks: Grateful -- The Weather -- That Girl -- I Would Never -- Alone -- Miracle
7/10
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