Album Review: Vents - Marked For Death

This here is the Australian MC's second release, the follow up to his 2008 record 'Hard To Kill', and is fully produced by Trials. Straight off the bat, anyone who isn't a fan of political content in their music need not bother with this record, it has a massive focus on political and social awareness. Luckily for myself Vents' anti-capitalist, atheist, pro-drug use, anti-war, anti-ignorance world views are almost identical to mine. Such issues dominate the content in amongst a reasonable amount of battle rap (the two seem to go hand in hand nowadays).

Cinematic massacres, purges, murders, animal urges
Militarism returns, made a massive resurgence
Unkind is a word just scratching the surface
Got me thinkin that humanity, it has to be worthless

As an MC Vents has a deep voice, aggressive delivery and dominating presence as well as an enjoyable flow...unfortunately none of these ever change up. I find with an MC that lacks versatility that to be enjoyable over a full-length release the productions needs to be impressive, but more importantly varied. Trials work on the boards here isn't particuarly varied but it's not a monotone soundscape either. As for the quality, for the most part it's reasonable enough, with a few real standouts (No Rest For The Wicked is amongst my favourite beats so far this year) and a few disappointments. That said there's no filler on the album, Vents is impressive on every single track and the guest verses all deliver, it's just the monotony that tends to drag the album down and kill a lot of the replay value.

Highlights: No Rest For The Wicked, Falling, The Punisher, Rollin' Balls

Lowlights: None 

Rating: 7.4/10

Further Listening: Check out his debut album, Hard To Kill, an album with a similar tone, similar content and of a similar quality.

Album Review: Drapht - The Life of Riley

The Life of Riley is the Australian MC's 4th release and he's continued to develop his sound with each album he puts out. Trials is on deck as the producer half of Brothers Grimm and continues his run of the last few years with another string of fantastic beats. On this release Drapht continues to move away from the battle rap multi filled style of his 'Pale Rider' days but he continues to improve his song structure and put forward more insightful content than he was capable of in his younger days.

What you're left with is some great production well complemented with dynamic hooks and an MC with a unique voice and versatile and varied content. As a whole the release is a successful cross-over album that'll garner commercial appeal while still appealing for the most part to his core fan-base.

Highlights: Sing It, Down, Good Morning
Lowlights: On and On, Murder Murder, Air Guitar (great lyrics, horrid beat and hook)

7.7/10

A Brief Introduction To Australian Hip-Hop

For those who’ve never heard any Oz Hip-Hop before (or even had any idea that there was such a thing) I’ll post a couple of tracks here to introduce you to some of the better artists. Eventually I’d like to do a big ‘Introduction to Australian Hip-Hop’ post but for the moment this’ll suffice.

The key feature that sets the Oz Hip-Hop scene apart from regular Hip-Hop is the lack of commercialisation. There’s no songs for ‘ballers’, there’s no club tracks, there’s no tracks dedicated to ‘hoe’s or bitches’, there’s no ‘shoot’em up’ tracks or references to guns and – most importantly - there’s no references to swag. Yet it’s not like everyone makes conscious Hip-Hop either, there’s a good mix of battle rap, conscious, introspective and I guess what you’d call ‘summer’ music (the closest you’ll get to commercialised).
 
Hilltop Hoods

These guys are here are Australia’s biggest Hip-Hop act by FAR, their also clearly the best act imo. They’re on an independent label, have never had a top 5 single yet have sold the equivelant of over 4 million records from their last 2 releases. As far as I know, in this era of music downloads no other independent artist in the world has achieved that. Anyway, sales don’t mean shit, ill let the music talk for itself.

Hilltop Hoods – Chase That Feeling
Hilltop Hoods – The Hard Road 

 

Recommended Albums: Theirs not a single weak release in their catalogue so you can't go wrong no matter where you start. The Hard Road is probably the easiest to get into though.

Bliss N Eso

These guys are the second most popular Oz Hip-Hop act and have a pretty diverse style with production influences from various genres. They manage to craft music with a wide appeal while still incorporating complex lyricism, social commentary and at times an almost stream-of-consciousness style.

 
Bliss N Eso – Sea Is Rising
Bliss N Eso - This Is For You

Recommended Albums: Their latest release, Running On Air, is their best album imo, followed by Flying Colours. The only weak release is their second album, Day of the Dog.

Trem

Trem is apart of the group Lyrical Commission, and is the premier battle rapper in the country. Here’s why.

Lyrical Commission - Bounty Hunterz

M-Phazes

M-Phazes is the countries premier producer (worked with Royce, Elzhi, Pharoahe Monche and others I’m forgetting right now) and his album, Good Gracious, is a great place to start if you’re new to the genre as it features a large variety of the scenes biggest artists.

M-Phazes - Walking On Clouds ft. Bliss N Eso
Royce Da 5'9", Elzhi & Supastition - Best To Do it (Prod. M-Phazes)

Well, I hope that was of some help. In the future i plan on doing a much more detailed post on the Aussie scene but this should be plnety to get any newcomer started.

Previously: Track Review: Trem - Omega Man

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Track Review: Trem - Omega Man (Prod. Prowla)

 
'We from a lost land where theres MC's not pop bands'

That opening line should give you a good idea straight off the bat of what type of Music this is. It's battle rap reminiscent of the 94-95 Illmatic era where it's all about respect and skills on the mic not money, fame or sales. It's a style that's done quite poorly by a lot of Australian MC's. Not Trem. The man who's looked upon as probably THE greatest wordsmith in the Australian scene doesn't let down all those who've suffered the comparable-to-detox length wait for the album.

“We from a lost land, where the clock’s hands is stopped, 
before the rot set in, before they shot Scott La Rock, 
before the shops stocked rap in a section called urban, 
and every third person’s thinking they’re word surgeons
but ya'll vrigins, first come first served
n squirt ya nut with the first pump and call curtains
I got this bitch skirt hitched up mid tit-fuck
But it ain't feel the same since the game got that nip-tuck"

This track is a fantastic of example of battle rap done well with no forced multi's, some content and some great metaphors scattered throughout. The Prowla beat sets the mood perfectly with a raw, eerie, almost horror movie like vibe to it. He did a great job with the chorus as well, changing the sample cut each time and incorporating them into the verses at points. It's refreshing to hear some actual scratching in Hip-Hop.

Rating: 9/10 

While your waiting for the album to drop i recommend taking a lot at the excellent Lyrical Commission album (of which Trem is a member of) named The Stage Is Set.