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Major-label “positive” rappers like this decade-old crew or fellow West Coasters Dilated Peoples have defended the old school like schoolmarms upholding the five principles of hip-hop as if they were as much fun as the three R’s. Feedback starts off much the same, with throwbacks to early LL Cool J and Run-DMC followed by a Sugarhill Gang imitation. But this time the throwbacks are so brazenly imitative, they might raise the copyright hackles of the earliest copyright infringers, and the rest rips off everyone in the new school with as much love of theft. Kanye West’s taste for Curtis Mayfield samples gets lifted in “Gotta Understand”; choppy Neptunes-style speed raps are pinched in the punchy “Baby Please”; and every catchy anthem and sultry female nab a lesson from the one crew to break out of the (back)pack, Black Eyed Peas. Teacher’s pets will wrinkle their brown noses at the mention of those hitmakers, but when selling out is such loose fun, we’d be fools not to “Work It Out” too. That one, by the way, features Dave Matthews, and it works.
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