CD Reviews

Moe Pope + Headnodic

Megaphone | NatAural High/Koch

By CHRIS FARAONE | May 20, 2008

3.5 Stars

Megaphone is my favorite murder-free rap album since Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek’s Train of Thought. Titanic words those are, but despite bumping it every day for the past two months I’m still drawn to Headnodic’s infinitely woven rhythms and Project Move MC Moe Pope’s miraculously gritty parables. Tracks are rarely more convincing than the orchestral feats of “Durty,” the drum-spun boom-bap summer-afternoon-with-the-hydrant-cranked-open “Drop,” and “Happiness,” on which Moe rhymes: “I’m a spit until I catch that deal/So I can feed my child, fuck a rim on a wheel.” Megaphone marks a Boston reunion of sorts, with Moe and Headnodic both having jammed in the late-’90s organic house-party outfit Mission. But though they haven’t seen much of each other over the past eight years (Headnodic lives in the Bay Area, where he plays bass in the Crown City Rockers), it’s clear that they’ve remained creatively connected enough to collaborate on a project that could be dubbed a modern classic if it rises through the cloud of mediocre discs congesting this quarter’s rap-release schedule.

Related: Various artists, The Roots | Rising Down, Talib Kweli, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More

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