The Slaughters have certainly been awake lately. That's Hip Hop comes not even one year after Joell Ortiz's last album Human, the short story project produced entirely by !llmind. THH seems to be much more of a low-key project - Human had fan-submitted artwork on Instagram counting down each day until the release, but this album seemed to just appear out of nowhere. The Twitter profile of Ortiz is still promoting Human.
Perhaps that's because low-key is the theme of this album. This might just be one of the shortest rap albums I've ever listened to, clocking in at 29:13 in the span of ten songs. Not even a three minute average. It's one of those albums you can fit entirely into a single bus ride, or a lunch break, and so on. Definitely not overstaying it's welcome, that means Joell has less than half an hour to prove himself before it's over. And does he? Well, maybe. You could easily argue that each song holds its own. for Joell is a talented rapper with a very distinct style, but the tracks aren't highly polished. They feel like studio leftovers, in my opinion, that Joell brushed up slightly and sequenced decently. Decent would be a good word to describe this album. Not terrible. not bad, but not great. The beats are definitely a positive. Over the first half of the beats on Human, which I found to be slightly stale, are more vibrant and energized, and stay so consistently. 'Reppin N.Y.' is a favourite, with some booming bass that captures a hypnotic feel reminiscent of 'Lyrical Murderers' from the 2009 Slaughterhouse self-titled album. Then chorus is catchy, and the flows match the beat well. This song comes after one of the lesser moments, 'Fall Back' which has a screeching horn that manages to sound annoying by the end of the song, despite it's short length of 2:22. Ghostface Killah gets sampled on the final track, 'Walk With Me' but it feels out of place. There guest list is quite lengthy, considering the run-time. Notable are Kool G Rap and Chris Rivers, an old hip-hop legend and previous Joell Ortiz collaborator respectively. But the one feature that really caught my attention was that of fem-cee Raven Felix on the track 'Precious'. At first, I only thought she was a singer recruited for the chorus, but then she took to her own verse and stole the show. This is probably a bad thing, but I haven't listened to that many female rappers. Felix's verse makes me want to - male points of view are very different from female ones, and as rappers are basically expressing points of view, hearing the female perspective is quite an interesting experience. Felix addresses female rapper stereotypes - "they said I had to shake my ass if I was tryna' blow. but I ain't bout to climb the pole and fuck up my designer clothes" - and the dominant male sexual presence about 'getting pussy and bitches' is of course reversed, with lines such as "to that dude in my face acting thirsty to chill" and "imagine me with a (???) tryna' jump on his lap / nah". It's a good contrast to the sex in hip-hop that males rap about. Other than that, unfortunately, there isn't too much memorability in That's Hip Hop. As stated earlier, it is undeniably decent, but not much sticks out that much to stick in the mind. There aren't any godawful songs, which has been the downfall of more than one album already this year, but the highlights aren't as strong as they could have been. 6.5/10 |
201820162015Scores0-30 = Bad
31-49 = Sub-par 50-60 = Average 61-70 = Decent 71-80 = Good 81-89 = Great 90-99 = Incredible 100 = Perfect Archives
September 2018
|