#Mos def the ecstatic audiocastle full

Some of the tightest and most inventive rhymes you’ll ever hear are on this album, with the conceptual gem “Stray Bullet” being a particular lyrical highlight.

Whether they are storytelling, philosophizing, joking, bragging, being conscious, or simply throwing out battle raps – their lyrical performances are top-tier in every aspect – there is NOTHING cliche or run-of-the-mill about the lyricism on Stress: The Extinction Agenda. Both emcees manage to step up their already considerable game from their debut, they come with phenomenal rhymes and complex flows – bar for bar lyrical Hip Hop doesn’t get much better than this. Pharoahe Monch is and has always been the better rapper of the two, but Prince Po is perfectly able to hold his own – which is incredible enough. In terms of wordplay, flow, delivery, AND content – this is the gold standard. Some albums from this era sound dated now but Stress: The Extinction Agenda sounds as fresh today as it did on the day it was released – the mark of a true classic. This album was way ahead of its time in vision and execution. Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch come with unparalleled lyricism on this dark, dense, complicated, and intellectual album.

They admirably succeeded in creating an album with similarities to the first album, while doing something completely different at the same time. Organized Konfusion - Stress: The Extinction Agenda (1994)įollowing their eponymous debut LP, Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po had a lot to live up to. This was the album (along with Jungle Brothers’ Straight Out The Jungle) that paved the way for acts like A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, Freestyle Fellowship, Digable Planets, and many others. De La Soul’s debut album was unlike anything Hip Hop had seen up to then, and while arguably all Hip Hop in the 1980s can be called ‘ experimental’ because the genre was still in its infancy, 3 Feet High And Rising deserves to labeled thus for sure. Clever wordplay, deft rhymes, playful production, positivity, and fun: 3 Feet High And Rising represented a new direction for Hip Hop, clearly a reaction to cliches already emerging in Hip Hop, even in its early years. This album introduced the skit to Hip Hop albums and although skits more often irritate than add value, on this album they work. The first four are classics, De La Soul’s debut 3 Feet High And Rising arguably the most important of them all.Įxperimental, innovative, and hugely influential – this cooperation between De La Soul and producer Prince Paul is a landmark album. One of the biggest travesties in Hip Hop streaming is the unavailability of De La Soul’s first six albums. Though there are highlights throughout, two of the most notable tracks are at the very end: 'History,' where Talib Kweli joins in over a wistful J Dilla beat, and 'Casa Bey,' where a playful Mos Def somehow keeps up with Banda Black Rio's deliriously frantic samba funk.De La Soul - 3 Feet High And Rising (1989) Flash, the album is a gumbo that adds juicy dub thwacks, regal synthetic horns, tangled piano vamps, dashes of spiritual jazz, and rolling Afro-beat, almost all of which is cloaked in light reverb.

Combined with backdrops from Georgia Anne Muldrow, Preservation, the Neptunes' Chad Hugo, and the Ed Banger label's Mr. Altogether, they provide much of the album's dusty off-centeredness even though 'Supermagic' has Mos Def at his most energized and alert, its needling psychedelic guitars and sweeping Bollywood drama are transportive. Some of the productions from brothers Madlib and Oh No were pulled from their instrumental releases, including a pair from the India-themed installments of the Beat Konducta series. For those who are deeply into the Stones Throw label, the album won't take quite as long to process. Oscillating between cerebral gibberish and seemingly nonchalant, off-the-cuff boasts, it's obvious that Mos Def is back to enjoying his trade.

#Mos def the ecstatic audiocastle full

It was evident that he was not inspired, no doubt prompting a fair portion of his followers to think, 'OK, maybe we should have been more specific: please make a good rap album.' On The Ecstatic, it's not as if Mos Def makes a full return to the lucid/bug-eyed rhymes heard on decade-old cuts like 'Hater Players' and 'Hip Hop.' Instead, he comes up with a mind-bending, low-key triumph, the kind of magnetic album that takes around a dozen spins to completely unpack. After he released 2006's True Magic, his first all-rap release in seven years - following the back-to-back instant classics Black Star and Black on Both Sides - it was easier to understand why he had been devoting much more time to acting and diversions like The New Danger. During the first several years of the 2000s, it wasn't unreasonable to want Mos Def, one of the most dazzling living MCs, to make a rap album.