Mar 22 2009
EP Quickies - Brother Ali’s The Truth Is Here and Common Market’s The Winter’s End
I’ve come to realize that in the midst of reviewing so many full length albums, there is much quality music that gets lost simply because they’ve been released as 4-10 track EPs. No more of that. From now on, EPs will get their much deserved shine as well and I’ll try to backtrack to older EPs as well. Today’s however are both from 2009.
Hits: Real As Can Be, Philistine David, Little Rodney, Palm The Joker, Good Lord, Talkin My Shit, The Believers (ft Slug), Begin Here
Strikes: N/A
Balls: Baby Don’t Go
First up is The Truth Is Here by Brother Ali, which was released recently as a CD/DVD combo. With three great full length albums (1 arguably a modern classic) and an incredible EP in the form of Champion, Brother Ali has been steadily moving up on my list of favorite emcees. All I can say is this EP does not hinder that forward movement in any way. Each of the 9 tracks are laced with some great beats from Ant of Atmosphere and Ali absolutely destroys each track. A nice guest appearance from Slug doesn’t hurt things as well, and I would actually love to see a whole album full of collabo tracks between them. It’s not quite as classic as Champion was but it’s still great and you should by all means pick this one up.
Hits: Nouveau Depart, Escaping Arkham, Brasso, Slow Down Moses, The Picture of My Delorean Gray
Strikes: N/A
Balls: N/A
Second is The Winter’s End EP by rap duo Common Market. It seems that after dropping a good album last year, both RA Scion and Sabzi wasted no time messing around and continued to hone their respective crafts. Sabzi continued in moving away from the soulful horns and upbeat drum beats of their debut and opted to concentrate more on the ambient, dark but relaxing soundscapes he started to experiment with in Tobacco Road. RA Scion also shows improvements as an emcee, employing both his signature flow and more slower one when necessary and sometimes switching between the two in the same song. At 5 tracks totaling14:14, the EP makes for a quick but rewarding listen and is in my opinion much better than their Black Patch War EP. Hopefully this means that their next full length will be an absolute killer. Anyways, do yourself a favor and check this one out as well.
