They don’t make grooves like this in too many places except
Motown. By the time you finish Black Milk’s full length
debut, Popular Demand, you can’t help but think, this
23-year-old producer-turned-emcee is poised to be an audible
hip hop voice (on the mic and the boards) for years to come.
These are good hands.
It would be next to impossible for a
breathing, clinically sane artist from Detroit –
specifically, a young producer – to craft an album without a
discernible Dilla influence, and Demand definitely
has Dilla fingerprints all over it. But does that make Black
a copycat or rather, that he’s a beat maker with good
tastes? The latter is much closer to reason. No matter where
you think Black takes his production cues, here’s to wishing
all producers (trailblazers or biters) could give us a thump
like “Play the Keys”, with
the sparse shaker
and the rhythmic piano chords filling the holes. And whereas
Black used his fair share of sped-up soul samples (the modern
equivalent to yesteryear’s ubiquitous break beats) he shows time
and again that he’s no slave to clichés, offering another
instrumental interlude (“Luvin It”), fit with the groove of a
snapping tambourine and guitar-strum and some spacey
synthesized, melodic backdrop reminiscent of the Isley
Brothers’, “Whose That Lady?”. Black’s adlibs makes one think
he’s in the studio zoning just like we are listening to it,
right before he revealingly quips, “This is the type of sh*t I
really wanna make, Man.” It’s obvious this is a young man who
not only appreciates musicality, but has creative aspirations to
boot.
Black is somewhat
atypical in that he is also quite taken with his creative
prowess. As much as Black spits throwaway bars about frivolous
women, his obsession with money and what money buys, he arguably
spends equal time trumpeting his skills. This is unique, since
nowadays, it is not often one hears emcees as proud of their
music as they are of their rims. And more than most producers
that choose to duck inside the booth and babble some crayon
rhymes, Black offers ample verses of well-constructed,
tightly-flowed nuggets of wit and braggadocio.
If that’s not
enough, Demand is the only LP to feature Baatin with his
old Slum Village mates T3 and Elzhi (“Action”) since 2002’s
Trinity. So add coalition-builder to expert-producer and
skilled emcee as the qualities that make Black Milk and
Popular Demand more than welcome additions to hip hop. This
dude is a keeper.
--Vincent Thomas Vincent Thomas can be reached at musicdude@thisisrealmusic.com.
what's up man i no how you fell
cause am a downsouth nigga from the dirty Arkansas.
Posted
by: s.k
dope album , one of the best this
year . great producer and talented mc its worth it..
and great guest appearances like phat kat , slum
village, baatin, nametag , guilty simpson.....
Posted
by:
Money well spent! What it used to be
like.........when MC's were obsessed with the
metaphors, verbs, adjectives, nouns, showcasing verbal
ability over gritty sp1200 beats.....when everyone was
checking for slick lyrical content over "bounce"
beats....
Posted
by: s.k