Saturday, April 14, 2012

The Soulman, Lost In Time

Let's talk about the one Phill Most Chill record that always gets overlooked... DWG's fantastic excursions into his vaults of course get a ton of props. And then people go back and hold up his early classics like "On Tempo Jack" and his Baritone Tiplove material, and are now sweating his new releases, "Power Man & Iron Fist" and The Fast Rap EP. But there's one release that floats awkwardly in the middle - long after his early bangers, but before he was rediscovered. He dropped it in 2005, under the name Phill Most the Soulman on Puma Strut Records. It's called The Lo-Fi Theory EP.

You've got four songs (one very short!), with all the instrumentals on the flip. The cover is cool; a homage to Phill's other artistic profession, drawing. And it's got a pretty simple but compelling concept: he's taking beats he made back in 1994 and rhyming over them with new (for the time of its release) 2004 lyrics. So you know, not to take anything away from Buckwild and Celph Titled, but Phill Most Chill beat them to the idea they got so much buzz over by about five years.

So, let's take them separately. The instrumentals feel a little less busy than a we're used to from PMC; things are a little more smoothed out. But in all other respects, they sound exactly like Phill Most Chill beats, and all the positive things that implies. Each little sound that goes into the track stands out on their own, yet they come together to form something strong and absolutely hip-hop.

And the vocals? Well, he seems a lot more punchline-oriented in 2004 ("your whole style is fake; you couldn't beat Em back in the days when he made the 'Black Girls' mixtape"), and his delivery seems designed to play up the cleverness of what he's saying. His rhyme pattern often stretches to twisty, labyrinthine lengths to accommodate jokey similes ("Soulman, I bring the heat 'till your hair is wiltin'. A lot of rappers are famous without talent like Paris Hilton"). It's not bad, he still comes off with a solid flow and dexterous wordplay; but I don't like it as much as his earlier material, where he put the flow first, instead of playing to the gallery with easy attention grabbing pop culture references. Ha. I still feel like I'm talking about Nineteen Ninety-Now.

Anyway, the two elements together? It's a good fuckin' fit! Phill sounds damn nice over his vintage tracks. It defintiely should've been regarded as one of the stand-out releases of its year, but unfortunately no one was paying attention to Phill then. But the up side of that is that these aren't rare at all, and you should easily be able to scoop this one up at a standard 12" price, rather than the frightening, inflated numbers his rare material goes for. Not his penultimate masterpiece, but definitely a good, entertaining release to add to your crates while times are tight.

3 comments:

  1. VERY DOPE WRITE UP, AND YOUR SPOT ON WITH THE 19 NINETY NOW COMPARISONS....I PREFER PHIL'S OLDER MATERIAL, BUT I HAVE THIS ONE IN THE CRATES AND IT DEFINITELY HAS IT'S MOMENTS..

    PEACE-
    DRASAR MONUMENTAL..

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  2. Just seeing this, four years after the fact... yeah, I wasn't happy with my rhyme style on this record at all. Still trying to find myself in a new era after not rhyming publicly for over a decade, didn't really have it together yet. Shout out to my dude Macca for putting it out on Puma Strut regardless.... overall I was still happy with the project. Good write up, Werner, I think you 100% nailed it. --PEACE phill most

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