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Something Wicked This Way Comes Image
Metascore
81

Universal acclaim - based on 10 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
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  • Summary: This is the fourth Ninja Tune release for the innovative London-based hip-hop outfit, mixing somewhat more traditional rap cuts with acid-jazz and trip-hop instrumental pieces.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 10
  2. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Alternative Press
    90
    Grooves with uptight downtown funk that's not just for beat freaks. [May 2002, p.88]
  2. Colossal and cinematic, the fourth record from the Herbaliser is a timely achievement in music, a genre-bending statement of creative poignancy.
  3. A winning combination of hip-hop beats, horns, strings and cinematic soundscapes, the album is spiced with precise scratching and effectively abrupt changes in direction.
  4. This will be one of the best things you'll hear all year.
  5. There are tough, commanding rare grooves, fly spy-thriller tracks, big, daft hip-hop tunes, a brilliant lounge-reggae skank, 'Good Girl Gone Bad', and, in 'The Turnaround', and the 'Apache'-like b-boy break-out, 'Battle Of Bongo Hill', two of the funkiest, party starters you'll hear all year.
  6. The beats are just fine, but they lack the risk or innovation that could potentially make them truly engaging.
  7. The Wire
    60
    Poorly sequenced instrumental epics and rap cuts leave Something Wicked sounding disjointed. [#217, p.56]

See all 10 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. TonyF.
    Jun 7, 2002
    10
    Great playing, arrangements and choice guests like nascent chinese diva Seeming To take the album and their live show to new heights they Great playing, arrangements and choice guests like nascent chinese diva Seeming To take the album and their live show to new heights they have proved they are an awesome force that should finally break into the charts. This album is the best so far from the Herbaliser and they haven't neglected the original followers retaining all the grooves, scratching, rap and cinematic soundscapes with killer horns that put them on the Ninja Tune map in the first place. I look forward to miss To's own band's effort soon on Ninja too. Expand