Sound: A collection of tracks that bounce between rapid-rhymin’ UK grime, sing-songy Jamaican dancehall and ominous New York hip hop with a constantly changing arsenal of underground MCs. The unifying theme is the electro elements throughout – whether deep digital bass, bending and bubbling synths or short-circuiting noise bursts – and occasionally all the styles blur together on the same track.
Look For: Lots of old school hip hop references and the co-opting of classic lyrics.
Heavy Rotation tracks: “Master Your Flow” featuring Jammer; “Sick Ting” featuring Predator
Medium Rotation tracks: “BK Assassin” featuring Ruste Juxx; “Brooklyn Anthem” featuring 77Klash & Jahdan; “Reign” featuring Skepta
Explicit Lyrics*: On pretty much every track. You’ll need a clean version if you’ve got to keep your music FCC-friendly.
Recommended: Pale Fire is a strong document of hip hop’s expansion to the Caribbean and across the pond and shows some promising possibilities of what can happen when all those cultures are thrown together.
Grade: B+
Listen to samples from EP on iTunes
* Noting of explicit lyrics is for the benefit of radio music directors or anyone else that needs/wants to keep their music FCC-friendly.
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