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Feb 14, 2011When I do fire this album up, there are a lot of sounds I love, and a lot of ideas I truly appreciate. It's just that, when taken as a whole, Album of the Year is certainly more exhausting than it deserves to be.
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Jan 11, 2011The MC attacks his words diligently with rabid vigor, giving Album the forceful push of someone carrying the weight of loved ones lost.
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The crisp arrangements often overshadow his stiff, stentorian delivery, but he still manages to convey moments of both personal loss--the death of mentor/Slum Village rapper Baatin--and professional triumph.
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While there was an unspectacular battle-rap anonymity to his past lyrics, they were at least spit in the service of a strong overall style. Now he's grown a bit, upping the emotional dimension subtly and letting some more specific humanistic details come through, even in the lines that read like average boasts on paper.
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There's a stunning balance between fluid variations and deviations that in total feel like improvisation and the strictly confined, loping-in-circles gait of traditional hip-hop-a process which then lends itself to being described as simultaneously dynamic and hypnotic, loose and hard, jam and the jam.
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This a major step forward and for the adventurous hip-hop fan, it could very well be appropriately titled.
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Album of the Year certainly makes a case for his continual progression into one of the best producers in the hip-hop game. Maybe next time out he'll release the 'Album of the Year', but for now we just have one of the best of 2010.
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The end result is that, as far as we know (for now), Album of the Year is Black Milk continuing along at his very best.
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Album of the Year stands as one of 2010's most innovative and adventurous albums of any stripe, incorporating traces of African jazz, latin music, psych, metal, and more in its relentless attack. It bangs hard from start to finish, and it's guaranteed to send producers scrambling to rerecord their drums in its wake.
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Through soaking in various travails, and pouring them through the microphone, he has truly grabbed us. His beats have almost taken a backseat on this journey but it is worth it just to prove that his story, his journey and his life are much more interesting that a mere drum pattern and a sample.
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The WireDec 22, 2010Though he's lacking some in terms of identity and he'll probably never be a technical monster, he benefits from the same instinctive ability to ride a beat's pocket that rapping producer predecessors like Large Professor and, yes, Dilla himself possessed. [Nov. 2010, p. 66]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 7
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Mixed: 1 out of 7
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Negative: 0 out of 7
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Oct 13, 2010
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Jan 27, 2011