by John Bear
Daily Lobo
Aceyalone, while not the most lyrically gifted MC, is nonetheless blessed with a voice that is instantly recognizable.
Magnificent City, his latest offering, breaks rank from his normal fare.
His rhymes still suffer from a lack of coherence. One can listen to an entire album without the slightest inkling of what he is talking about. Esoteric lyrics plague the hip-hop world. While an MC's flow may be beautiful on the syllabic level, the literal meaning of the lyrics - without the presence of a translator with access to mind-reading technology - is lost.
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Hard-to-follow flows are not necessarily a death sentence, however. If an MC is not out to enlighten the listener with meaningful lyrics, he or she can still drop a dope album. The trick is to have a dope producer.
This has been Aceyalone's Achilles' heel. Though he possesses a melodic voice that can keep listeners engaged, his albums usually suffer from markedly lackluster production. From Accepted Eclectic to his work with Haiku d'Etat, Aceyalone's less-than-exceptional lyrics cannot rise above the often boring and uninspired beat writing.
Enter RJD2.
This beat-making dynamo is responsible for the instant classics Dead Ringer and Since We Last Spoke, the latter being listed as unclassifiable on iTunes. The inability to pigeonhole his music is his greatest strength. He has broken from the doldrums where most hip-hop stagnates and has set sail on some bizarre musical journey to the cutting edge. His beats dance seamlessly between gritty sample-driven soulfulness and bass-heavy electro-funk and never follow any industry trend whatsoever. God bless this man.
His work on Magnificent City complements the sing-songy style of Aceyalone perfectly. The harmony that exists between the two artists becomes evident on the opening track, "All For U," where a drunken descending horn sample and intricately bouncy drum lines induce immediate head nodding and ass swaying.
The club ready "Cornbread, Eddie and Me" features a deceptively simple guitar and clap-driven loop. Even when an RJD2 beat sounds simplistic, it isn't. Sometimes it takes several listens, but barely noticeable subtleties always lurk just below the surface.
Several tracks on the album seem to have standard hip-hop beats, but closer examination always reveals some break from the norm. For example, "Disconnected" contains garden-variety horn melodies, but the producer compensates by laying wildly unpredictable drum patterns underneath. The end result is an album that never becomes boring or uninspired because one never knows what will happen next.
Magnificent City is by far Aceyalone's best effort. And it really doesn't have much to do with him. His rhymes simply sound better because of the astounding production. Had he not gotten RJD2, this would have probably just been another forgettable album, bumped for a day or two and then filed away. If RJD2 decides to work with a more gifted MC in the future - he seems to have a thing for collaborating with less-than-spectacular rappers at the moment - he will more than likely produce an album that will achieve classic status the second it hits stores.
