Another one that got mentioned consistently on the instrumental hip hop lists.
Here we have a dark, jazzy take on the genre, with plenty of swooning distortions in the background to give it that latenight emotional core. This is really on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Madlib album (#165) though, this is all about taking a groove and riding it for a long, long time. Each song establishes a beat and a melodic sample and generally doesn't mess with them. Extra samples drift in and out, the swooning distortions oscillate ever-so-slowly, and the texture merges glacially, but it doesn't really work for me. Its not overly interesting, and it doesn't have any kind of between-the-notes minimalist magic to me, at least not that I've been able to find.
As background music, its fine, though it falls into that kind of Digable Planets territory, where it seems a bit douchey somehow. Maybe I'm just letting the jazz-rap samples and album name bias me though. One standout is Pete's Jazz, which find the right guitar line to lead it, but even that song overstays its welcome. Also, on the last 3 tracks, suddenly there's rapping, where there had been none before. Weird. And its not very good. This album's fine, but I've come across far too many better ones in this vein lately to warrant more than 2.5/5
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