Jedi Mind Tricks - The Thief and the Fallen (2015)

The album cover looks like some shit you'd reblog for an artsy blog on Tumblr. Fitting that they slapped it on a bunch of shirts, eh? What aesthetic is that? Answer: THAT JEDI MIND SHIT!!

Since Jedi Mind Tricks can't seem to go five minutes without internal problems, Jus Allah is out and Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind is back in. At this point, I feel like they need Metallica's old therapist that was featured in the documentary "Some Kind of Monster", if anything, to pit the three of them in a room with sock-em-boppers, have 'em go wild, record it and release it with a song over it to be the best Jedi Mind Tricks video, which is to say the only fucking Jedi Mind Tricks music video without them standing in front of random shit and miming the lyrics as the cameras cut to them in front of OTHER random shit while miming out the lyrics, with a random R.A. the Rugged Man cameo to really seal the deal with underground hip-hop heads. You know how it goes, you know what it is, what it do, where it go, how it be.

Anyway, right out the gate, I (because I love you) should let you know that Stoupe is great as always, but not as great as before. Instead of an approach towards bangers, he mainly crafts more atmospheric and/or calm, detailed beats on this album, which initially set me off until I realized that Vinnie Paz is pretty different on this album: He experiments with new and even faster, rapid-fire flows, perhaps most notably in "And God Said to Cain (feat. AFRO AKA All Flows Reach Out, R.A. the Rugged Man & Eamon)", a track in which nearly everyone involved has a shitload of words leave their mouth but nothing to say, but the dude sounds like he's been smoking a few packs a day and that he's fucking tired. Maybe it's age and bad choices catching up to him in the form of his voice, because I've seen that fuckin' documentary about the group where he's chasing liquor with more liquor, but he sounds kinda.. Old, I guess. Much love to the man for all of the great songs and albums he's been involved with, but he does sound noticeably weaker on this album.

As you may know, I said that I felt that "Violence Begets Violence" didn't really feel much like a Jedi Mind Tricks album due to the lack of Stoupe, but not even just due to the lack of Jus Allah does this not really feel like a Jedi Mind Tricks album. The production, like I mentioned earlier in the review, rarely lends itself to making a hard-hitting banger, and sometimes even fucks up the song a bit, one notable case being with how "Rival the Eminent (feat. Lawrence Arnell)" is just way too fucking crowded production-wise. "Fraudulent Cloth (feat. Eamon)" is apparently about Jus Allah (y'know, JOSH ALLAR) but holy shit: Eamon is a GUY?! He sounds like a woman! That's chill but damn, I was originally gonna say "he doesn't fit the track" but the track doesn't fit the fucking GROUP! Definitely shoulda been a solo Vinnie Paz track, if it weren't for Stoupe's production.

One track definitely worth noting "Destiny Forged in Blood" is also really fucking good, due to the beat which sounds like it was taken from a World War II battle-march song, and Vinnie's fast and intricate flow, which seems to be both respecting and dissing former member Jus Allah the entire song by describing him as being a ruthless soldier that was more sadistic than the others ("You came through the door with the chain and the saw") that was consumed from the inside and lost his mind, but then Vinnie says near the end of the song "I was on the mic, "1 2 thing thing on?", you was just an asshole, rama-lama-ding-dong" and I just tune the fuck out. Either way, it's a GREAT beat and I wish there were more songs like this on the album! LET SOME OF THAT JUS ALLAH HATE OUT, VINNIE!! GIVE HIM SOMETHING TO RETALIATE TO!! I'm not even just saying that because I want to hear Jus Allah make a diss track, even though that'd probably be savage as shit, but come on, go for the throat!

If you strip away all thoughts of this not being a Jedi Mind Tricks album due to lack of any real hard-hitting aggressive bangers or raw street-smart backpacker classics, then this is actually a pretty decent hip-hop album for what it is, with the production feeling lush and Vinnie Paz taking his whole "I'M GONNA FUCKING GROWL INTO THE MICROPHONE" rapping style down for the most part, but after so many mid-tempo and frankly gorgeous sounding songs (if you tune out the rappers, mind), you have to think "If there's no bangers and no raw shit, then what's going to make this a good Jedi Mind Tricks album?" and that's really kind of sad, in a way, because when I think of Jedi Mind Tricks, sure, I think of a guy screaming at me for an hour to convert to Islam, and occasionally Jus Allah listing out his violent résumé to explain why he's been unemployed for the past few years, but I also think of shit that would make me want to fight a brick wall, and there's not really any of that here. Good album, but "good Jedi Mind Tricks album" is certainly a topic for a nice, long debate that'd inevitably end in fans sharing fantasies of how good "Violence Begets Violence" could've been if Jus Allah and Vinnie Paz weren't stupid enough to shaft Stoupe for an entire album.

7/10 ________________________________________________________
Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!