Get To Know H.E.R.

Hip Hop was born in South Bronx. That much is basic knowledge to all heads. From this one borough in NYC, a regional trend took the country by storm. And now, the United States is the undisputed hip hop champion of the world. What a lot of people in this country tend to overlook is that hip hop is now a global phenomenon. And judging by some of the quality coming out of these countries, I’d say that the United States is in some serious trouble. Just quickly going over one example of each element, we got Hong 10 from Korea covering b-boying, Miss Van from France covering grafitti, DJ Honda from Japan covering DJing and Roots Manuva from Britain covering emceeing.

I’m not saying all this to make ya’ll panic or anything. I mean, I don’t care how good they are, nobody’s touching our G.O.A.T.’s. Nobody! But I am saying all this in order to open your eyes a bit. You don’t like the crap that’s playing on our airwaves? Well, now you can look outside of the 50 states to get your fill of good hip hop. One such group that you should be aware of is Pete Philly and Perquisite, a duo from the Netherlands. Pete Philly is the emcee half and Perquisite handles the production (and plays the cello too if that sort of thing floats your boat). Their music sounds fresh and exciting compared to some of the garbage we label hip hop these days, and to top it all off, it’s all in English! So even though you’re listening to foreign hip hop, it’s in your language, so you can actually understand what the hell’s being said. Life’s great isn’t it?

The debut album, Mindstate, starts off with an Intro consisting of some scratching over a nice, mellow instrumental. It then jumps into the smooth Relieved, in which we first hear Pete Philly rap. Granted he’s no Rakim, and his rhymes aren’t the most complex shit you’ve ever heard, but his flow and voice matches the instrumental so much that it just kinda seems like a part of the music. Take that as you will. The album then continues with Insomnia, which has a pretty dope instrumental, but some of Pete’s first and second verses leave me a bit wanting. On the next track, Motivated, the rhymes finally hit the right spot and the end product is pretty dope. Pete Philly seems to be one of the few emcees that can sing in a song and not piss the hell out of me.

Eager is a fairly graphic song for the ladies and comes off decent enough, effectively portraying Pete Philly’s “eager” mind state. Lazy continues the album on the right track, but Respect comes off sounding a bit forced and contrived, like it was put in for a bit of street cred. The next track, Cocksure is better than Respect, but not by much. It does have a pretty damn interesting beat to it and it reminds me a lot of some Planet Rock stuff. The album then continues with the short, but enjoyable Conflicted and picks up the album. Next up is Grateful, which, as the title says, consists of Pete Philly giving some thank you shout outs over an absolutely beautiful instrumental. The title track (Mindstate) finds the two at the top of their game. Pete Philly drops some pretty introspective, personal rhymes over Perquisite’s bass heavy beat and the simple scratched out hook is just icing on the cake.

After a relaxing guitar riff at the end of Mindstate, the album jumps right in to Mellow, which features the lovely pipes of Senna Gourdou. Pete Philly actually sings, instead of rapping on this track and although Pete doesn’t have the greatest voice in the world, he has a unique voice that isn’t bad to listen to. At about 3:55, the main song ends, and is followed by an excellent, smooth guitar solo, which then leads straight into the next track, the aptly titled Paranoid. The production on this track is nothing short of great, especially during the beat changing interlude in the middle. Cheeky is another great track, and features fellow Dutch rapper, Cee-Major. Afterwards comes the strictly instrumental Grateful II, followed by Hope. Hope features a rapper everyone should be familiar with by now, Talib Kweli and comes off as a pretty dope track. There’s a remix out somewhere by DJ Mitsu, which is equally as dope, if not doper. The final track on the album, Amazed, is another track featuring the singing Pete Philly. I actually prefer the second half of this track, when the cello and guitar kicks in but to each his own.

The Good: Insomnia, Motivated, Lazy, Conflicted, Grateful, Mindstate, Mellow, Paranoid, Cheeky, Hope, Amazing
The Solid: Intro, Relieved, Eager, Cocksure, Grateful II

The Bad: Respect

Final Score: 9.0/8.5

Pete Philly and Perquisite have excellent chemistry together and it shows all throughout their debut album. However, I think it is safe to say that Perquisite is better at what he does than Pete Philly is. While Pete isn’t a bad emcee (he’s actually better than lots), he’s pretty inconsistent. On one track he’ll be dope as fuck, and then on the next, you’ll be left scratching your head. Still, he manages to work well with the instrumentals and like I said before, he may be one of the few select emcees that can actually get away with doing whole singing tracks. The instrumentals on this album are consistently freaking gorgeous. The word pretty is not a word that one uses a lot when describing hip hop albums, but damn it’s the perfect word to describe the soundscapes here. The Dutch know how to craft a nice beat (Nicolay anyone?). So, in conclusion, if not for the hopes of broadening your horizon, at least pick this up for its amazing production.