I was listening to this album the past week and thinking it was a candidate for a top albums of the year. When I checked the release date I was surprised that it’s already been over a year since it’s release. Has it really been that long? The release predates this blog but it’s album worth talking about.

When I first heard this album it was a little disappointing. 15 years between albums is a long time and there are obviously expectations from the listeners and pressure on the artist to live up to them expectations. It’s not that Lateef and Lyrics Born have released nothing in them 15 years. Lateef had worked on a few projects most notably Maroons and The Mighty Underdogs. Lyrics Born has had several solo albums and experienced some commercial success. The pressure comes from the fact that the early Latyrx/Solesides work was seminal to the independent art rap scene. Other artists that pioneered that scene have also had mixed success and struggled to maintain relevance in a music scene that has expanded drastically with home production getting cheaper and easier.

With this album it feels like they may have tried too hard to create another art rap classic. Just by naming it “The Second Album” puts a lot of expectation in place. Having put it away for a few months and coming back to it this past week it sounds better than I remembered especially the first 9 tracks. Unfortunately the last four songs take away from the rest of the album. Overall there is not really a consistent thought or sound throughout the album. In some places the lyrics are conscious political pieces and in others parts we hear party raps.

There are some really great songs on here It’s Time, Reload, Exclamation Point and Watershed Moment all deliver what I expect from Latyrx. Some of the more experimental tracks like Deliberate Gibberish and The Power of Rumor show their skills and are good tracks but come of a little immature. The later tracks such as Sometimes Why? and Electric Chair are what ruins the album and it is mainly just the music and the hooks that don’t work for me.

I am probably more critical of this album than I would be if it was someone I had never heard before. It’s really just the high expectations and that it seems to fall apart at the end that just make it disappointing. Overall it is a decent album with some really great tracks.