Czarface - Czarface (2013)
Built up of rappers Esoteric and Inspectah Deck (of Wu-Tang Clan fame) with the producer 7L backing them, this album is pretty much a flashback to the early 90s when boom bap hip-hop was annoying the fuck out of your dad via jackasses walking down the street blaring it on their boomboxes, and, as you might have gathered by now, also a throwback (in lyrics/vibe) to when you'd wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch "X-Men" or whatever other superhero cartoons that you haven't seen since you were 11, thus your rose-tinted glasses towards them, much like how you still insist "Boys Meets World" is the shit. You ever notice how shitty the early 2000s "X-Men" animated series was compared to the one from the early '90s? I'm sure these guys have. This album is pretty interesting on paper: Two fucking GREAT MC's with a grea- a good producer!! Seriously, I haven't listened to much 7L & Esoteric work but while some of 7L's beats on this album are good, they're all pretty much standard boom bap that sounds like if you made one instrumental bar in FL Studio and just looped it over and over, occasionally mixing it up. I guess that's my inspiration to finally start publishing my beats, right? It's also worth noting that this album appeals to nerds WITHOUT being nerdcore. Awesome!
Esoteric and Inspectah Deck have a good amount of musical chemistry between them, and they're both great MC's who know how to write verses with plenty of multi and internal rhymes, references, etc, but honestly, they're on exactly the same level as each other to the point where it sounds like the only difference between their verses is the voice that's saying it, as neither of them really carry much energy or signature flair to their verses. They're both very technically sound and work well as a duo because of it, but if you're not that familiar with their voices, I imagine it's going to sound like it's just ONE rapper unless you really pay attention to the tones of their voices, which sucks, because they don't have the immediate vocal contrast that El-P and Killer Mike, or Eminem and Royce da 5'9". The guest features are pretty good, with Ghostface Killah and Action Bronson (TWO GUYS I CAN BARELY TELL APART AT TIMES!!) appearing on two separate tracks, and of course, what's a fucking underground hip-hop album without a guest feature by Vinnie Paz? It must be in the law that if you go anywhere near a microphone with a producer and you aren't signed, Vinnie's angry ass must come flying through the window while screaming more raps about how gay homosexuals are.
The songs range from okay to pretty good if you dig simple boom bap with complex rhymes, and both MC's constantly bring their best lyrically, but it can be a bit hard to get through this in one continuous listen, with me being able to put down the headphones for a solid thirty seconds, put them back on and feel like I haven't really missed anything, or in the case of the beat for "Rock Beast", being able to put down my headphones for its entire almost three minute running time without feeling like I've missed anything because HOLY FUCK that loud guitar note played in the beat! Holy shit that's fucking distracting and awful. Maybe they need me producing their stuff and pulling all the strings behind the scenes.. I mean, come on, where's the Young Thug feature? And they call this REAL HIP-HOP?! WITHOUT THUGGER?! FUCKING BULLSHIT!!
7/10
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