Friday, December 16, 2011

Sole and the Skyrider Band


It's a story you've heard a zillion times before. White guy raps, white guy makes a splash in the hip hop community, white guy makes a record and in theory gets big. The thing with all this is it's so commonplace now days it doesn't even matter, what does matter though is what said rapper does with his record to make him stand out. This is where Sole and the Skyrider Band step up to the plate and knock one out of the park with, Hello Cruel World.

Sole and his band are anything but cliché...they're so un-cliché that they don't even look like rappers. Anyway, their album Hello Cruel World is a heavy handed diverse affair that sounds so far away from anything playing at the clubs that it's lost. This is a good thing. Sole delivers tight spiky rhymes with precision and intelligence while the Skyriders back him up with some seriously cool sounds. Flutes, synths, samples, crisp beats, even Xiu Xiu show up on a track. It's all here and here in droves. At times sounding like Enigma lost in NWA’s old stomping grounds at others swaying around a dark room somewhere by itself, Hello Cruel World is filled with a richness of sound that's hard to compete with. So, really why even bother?

Sole and the Skyrider Band deliver the goods on Hello Cruel World. This is a rough, tough, and very good record that relies on the talent and diversity of its members to carry it through and carry it through it does...to the Promised Land.

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