CD Reviews

King Syze

Jedi Mind Tricks Presents: Labor Union | Babygrande

By CHRIS FARAONE | August 26, 2008

3.0 Stars

With his consistent, reclined flow, King Syze doesn’t always stand out alongside his Army of the Pharaohs brethren, particularly the leather-throated Jedi Mind Tricks frontman Vinnie Paz and the cauldron-tempered Celph Titled. But on his own, especially this time around, the Philly rhyme giant proves his worth with calculated lyrics that simultaneously touch topics and talk trash. From the horn-and-hormone-pumped intro to the Skammadix-produced string fling “The Best,” Syze shows that with proper backdrops he can dent heads on solo missions. Beat genius Stoupe might produce exclusively for Vinnie Paz, but there are leagues of qualified understudies, such as Waxwork of the Snowgoons, who are familiar enough with Jedi Mind’s orchestral æsthetic to make spinoff projects like The Labor Union fit within the extended family’s catalogue. The ruthless bangers here are the Big Pun-ly “That’s How You Rap” and “Play Ya Part” with Ill Bill and Doap Nixon. On the latter, the three hardly venture beyond “I’m rougher than you” claims, but Bill’s gruesome piano loop and thrice-kamikaze verses make for a sublime subterranean symphony. King Syze was overdue to shine; still, with a crew who never step down, he had to rise to skill levels that Dipset and G-Unit members could hardly comprehend.

Vinnie Paz | Season of the Assassin + Reef the Lost Cauze vs. Guns-N-Butter | Fight Music
We all needed a break from Jedi Mind Tricks — you, me, gay-rights activists, and even Stoupe and Vinnie Paz.
Sleep | Hesitation Wounds
On the subterranean-rap-hustle manifesto "Get It," from his new Hesitation Wounds, Portland (Oregon) MC Sleep rhymes, "I'll murder a set. . . . I'm kind of a big deal, you just ain't heard of me yet."
Slideshow: History of Guru and Gang Starr
Here is our salute – in photo, audio, video, and writing – to a Roxbury legend and the vast Gang Starr legacy he left behind.
Discovering Dilla
As with so many other figures in pop music, death has been good to hip-hop producer and MC J Dilla.
Get sprung
Between the packages that turn up on my Jamaica Plain doorstep and the envelopes that stuff my Phoenix mailbox, I have enough music to start a mixtape spot in Downtown Crossing.
Come clean
Jeru the Damaja vocalized underground agony before RZA declared that R&B stands for "rap and bullshit," before Dead Prez blasted "monotonous material," and way before Immortal Technique announced that he would soil a Def Jam development deal.
Birth of the DVDJ
Much of the hype swirling around the show was that Peanut Butter Wolf was going to "scratch" DVDs, thereby inventing a whole new style of performance. Slideshow: Stones Throw Anniversary Tour at the Paradise Rock Club, November 1, 2006
Rhythm for days
Jay Dee didn’t make music, he made movements. If it knocked in the late ’90s, he probably had a hand in it.
Due Dilla-gence
Extraordinarily missed Detroit beat stylist J Dilla (a/k/a Jay Dee) was righteously benevolent.
Clik tracks
Hide your naughty daughters and aspiring MC sons: Brooklyn’s Duck Down is that kingly retrofitted, incomparably propped hip-hop label that all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to fuck with.
Part-time villain
As much as Ill Bill eschews clichés, the Brooklyn rap goon is either a righteous friend or a torrential enemy.
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Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More

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