Five Earpieces 23rd July - Be Selektive

Statik Selektah - Spell My Name Right

This is a seminal hip hop album, full stop. I'm happy to put it out there as 2008's best release. Don't agree? Listen to the first three tracks:

1. Stop, Look, Listen (feat Styles, Termanology and Q-Tip)
2. Express Yourself 08 (feat Termanology, Talib Kweli and Consequence)
3. 6 in the Morning (feat Joell Ortiz, Kool G Rap and Sheek Louch)

... Do that and THEN front.

When I first copped Spell My Name Right I truly found it hard to believe how perfect the production was (although I reckon 6 in the Morning would be one of the best hip hop songs ever with a bit of a different master treatment - sorry I'm just sayin!...). And that's without the project being over-produced. The album really shows just how far hip hop production has come since its inception. And the line-up (Statik Selektah is a producer for those who aren't familiar - all of his tracks feature guest rappers) is a who's who of the best of the best. In fact I'd better write another post just about that - stay tuned...

I went out and grabbed some more of Reks' music after listening to Big Dreamers (track 15), a really poetic soul-toucher featuring just Reks on the mic. One of the album's top two or three tracks (possibly it's best, depending on my day). Verse one to three are all straight fire, and the beat (sample being chopped up and deployed pretty much simultaneously in the Jacob Giles studio over on the Australian continent for 1NF0's Man Made Mountains<) really gets under your skin and sends you on a journey of reflection.

Unfortunately Reks' other work just didn't do it for me the same way Big Dreamers does. I only listened to one of his other two or three albums so far, and it was decent so I'm not writing him off. But it wasn't Spell My Name Right standard.

I listened to Spell My Name Right so much for about four months that I needed to give it a rest lest lose my personality and speak it's lyrics in response to any/all questions, prompts and conversations from the outside world. It's still on my 1Gb player (yeah I know it's 2009, f#ck your 80 gig iPod) though and is getting at least one full listen a week.

I won't be moving off the player anytime this year.