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| Verses - Listening Session |
| Release: | Listening Session |
|  | | MyHHHdb | |
| Media: | [Audio CD] | | Released: | 2006 [ Listen to HHH from this era on Spotify ] |
| Recordlabel: | Indie (Independant Release) |
| Info: | The album is released 28th February, 2006.
Production by Tony Stone.
1. Yes, Yes, Y’all…
2. We Do It - featuring Tony Stone & Mark J
3. Funky Dividends
4. ConfusionUnion - featuring Braille
5. Fa La La
6. Ms. O’Ginny
7. Fatherless Child (Blues PSA)
8. Love Jawns - featuring Chloë
9. Kid Fresh Interlude
10. Cassette Tapes & Roller Skates - featuring Cult-Free &
Verbs
11. Yoof Rally
12. We Do It (Radio Edit) |
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| | Review: | I am savoring this. Among the words rarely used in hip-hop
reviews (or, really, in reviews for any type of music)
include: chaste, restrained, socially responsible, and
pious. Yeah, pious. While not quite on the level of
Please-Hammer-Don’t-Hurt-‘Em-sparkling-parachute-pants-terra
ced-sloping-hightop-“We’ve-Got-to-Pray-Just-to-Make-It-Today
”-era Hammer, Iowa MC Verse’s Listening Session makes Little
Brother’s The Listening look like Too $hort’s Greatest Hits.
Oh, and it sounds pretty good, too.
There are plenty of reasons not to like Verses’ work: he
sounds uncannily like Kanye West (a fact not helped by his
referencing “Jesus Walks”); the Little Brother parallels are
strong (The Listening to the Listening Session?); his
sing-songy flow cloaks his average rhyming ability (few of
his bars will drop jaws); and in an age with our President
sets his apocalyptic, paranoid agenda with the help of
“prayer” (oh, to be a fly on the wall for those
conversations), Verses rides hard for Christianity. I heard
the same grumblings from some sectors about the last year’s
Ohmega Watts album – too preachy, too Christian – but let’s
be straight up about this: you can’t have your cake and eat
it too. Complain all you want about the depravity of today’s
music, but don’t indiscriminately hate on positive music
because it offends your religious sensibilities, or lack
thereof.
Few of the songs on the Listening Session pack the visceral
punch of cuts like the aforementioned “Jesus Walks” and the
Wu’s “Jah World”, but perhaps that’s for the better. Instead
of spewing fire and brimstone, Verses approaches his subject
matter with a casual, self-deprecating playfulness: in the
course of dissecting the sexualization of advertising on
“Ms. O’Ginny,” he recounts his inabilities to buy M&Ms
without guiltily thinking about the flesh used to peddle
them on the tube; on “Cassette Tapes & Roller Skates” he
reflects on the joys of listening to old school hip-hop and,
well, roller-skating (has T.I. made that cool? Do two make
it a trend? Is the age of the skating rink/buffet/strip club
upon us?).
Even when Verses tends to get too preachy (“Yoof Rally”),
producer Tony Stone keeps the album on mission, combining
airy, blustery tracks that evoke neo-New-York 9th (“We Do
It”) with jazzier fare (the hitting album opener “Yes, Yes,
Y’all”) and harder beats (the exotic, Tuvan “Fa La La” and
the bluesy, moody “Fatherless Child”).An impressive showing
for any producer, underground or major.
Throughout all of this, Verses pays respect to those MCs
past and present who have provided intelligent, sincere
music – the Wu Tang, KRS-One, the Roots – regardless of
their personal persuasion. Recognizing wisdom and knowledge
in all their different forms. That’s how to get off the
soapbox and onto the boombox.
– T.M. Wolf | | source: Okayplayer, added: Jul 07, 2006 |  |
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