In full disclosure, you should know that I am a white, bearded, thirty-something male with musical roots mostly in rock and metal. Since Trey and I have been friends for as long as I can remember, some of our musical influences have rubbed off on each other. Dungeon Family’s Even in Darkness was the first hip-hop album that really struck a chord with me. Rappers were actually saying something credible, with eloquence, and without dropping the F-Bomb or the N-Word every other syllable. And on top of that, the songs were catchy, with each member’s style so distinctive, I could actually tell them apart.
I have such fond memories of riding around with Trey and listening to that album, I’ve always wanted to hear more from the same group. Well, here we are over a decade later with a new Goodie Mob album, it’s approximately one-fourth of the Dungeon Family members I care about, so what the hell, I’ll take it.
After one listen through of Age Against the Machine, I felt that it was both better than I expected and also disappointing. My disappointment comes from something that Trey mentions as well: the interludes/skits/mini songs. In rock, it’s best to have a tight knit album, a collection of solid songs from start to finish. Anything else in between is what we call filler. Filler breaks up the album, ruins the flow, like bad grammar pulls you out of a good book. On AATM, we get a collection of good songs crippled by filler. I feel like there is a solid EP right in the middle of this record with the rest being unfinished tracks or Cee-Lo solo songs. It’s possible that at the end of the Mob’s studio time in Jamaica, they just gathered what they had and splorked it onto the record with no concern for completeness or flow. It’s a shame because the good songs on here really are good.
I’m impressed how well Cee-Lo fits into this album, considering his recently found pop status. He doesn’t feel out of place when all the members are on the same track. He doesn’t shine above the rest or stick out like, “Oh, there’s Cee-Lo” as something separate from “those other guys”. It feels very natural and it’s good to hear Cee-Lo rapping again, even though he is an astoundingly good singer. There are a couple of instances where I feel he may have snuck into the studio at night and inserted some of his own solo tracks into the mix. While not bad, those songs do stand apart and don’t gel quite right with the album as whole, furthering the overall disjointed vibe.
The production here is excellent and I’m glad to see from a prog-rock perspective that these guys take some risks with the tracks, changing up rhythms and using odd sounds here and there. It’s an impressive effort that keeps the good songs from sounding too same-y.
At the end of the day, I’m glad I got the album. Big Rube’s voice on the intro track transported me back to 2001 and made me relieved that even as I get older and everything changes, some things still remain to take me back there again. I like this album purely based on nostalgia, but I also recognize the moments of actual quality that shine through from time to time. If you aren’t a fan of hip-hop, it probably won’t sway your opinion much, but you could do a lot worse. You could do a lot worse.
-Attikuh Isley
And now on to Trey-K and the main event:
