Is Luke Sick one of those guest MCs, and did I immediately jump to his song as soon as I popped off the shrink-wrap? Sure, and he does have one of the best tracks on here ("Shogun's Decapitator"). But here's the interesting thing I discovered about this album: it's stronger played straight through from the beginning to the end. Hip-Hop's had a lot of producer albums over the years, and usually they feel like compilations to be jumped around and picked apart. Like In Control vol. 2 - how many of us are playing the Nexx Phase or Portia songs as much as "The Symphony Part 2?" Not that this is a Deltron-like "concept album" or anything; it's not that conjoined. But I started out needle dropping, and when I jumped to the On Tilt song (at this point, regular readers should not need to be told that On Tilt is the duo of Luke Sick and QM), I was disappointed. I didn't think it was bad, just not as effective as I usually find them to be. Maybe it just needed a catchier beat.
But when I finally played the whole album through, I liked their song better in context. And I found that to be true of a lot of this, especially in the production, so let's take The Fog Of War as a cohesive album. Instrumentally, it isn't super dark and moody, but it is gritty. I didn't know a lot of these artists. Googling around, several of them seem to be from Chicago, one's from Atlanta... The first MC, Infinite, I only know from having one of the tighter tracks on the prior Raw B album, Uncorrupted. He comes off nice here, too, impressively flipping between a variety of styles; and Raw B lays down a really fresh collection of samples for him. It's a good opener to pull you in, but it's track 2 where this album really takes off.
Raw B starts off juggling up vocal samples from "The Message" and "Mind Playing Tricks," which tells you all you need to know. Low, rumbling bass and air raid sirens kick in as somebody named Fable Angelo really sets off a series of tragic narrative raps. The vibes are like early Paris, documenting the failure of the American project, "I seen the young dude approachin' me with his crew. They stood right in front of me and wouldn't let me move; said the color of my laces was disrespectful and rude; but today was my lucky day, he gonna let me choose. He said I could take off my shoes or I could be the next one dead on the news. Hold up, this dude tryin' to punk me? I punched him in his face, yeah, they jumped me. I walked home barefooted and bloody, but I know where my momma keeps her gun and her money. I'll be right back." Damn.
Whoever this guy is, he just stole the show from my favorite rappers on here. Although, with that said, approaching their song after all this bleaker Art of War material, I appreciated hearing On Tilt pop up when they did: a distorted party jam that only makes sense in a war zone.
It's fourteen tracks total. Eleven full vocal songs with three instrumentals floating in between. The only other MC I know on here is Gennessee, Raw B's old mate from Double Life (along with L'Roneous da Versifier), who you might best remember from that "Sucker MCs 2000" record with Masta Ace. The variety of styles on here, brought together by a singular production style, helps keep this engaging and smooths over any bumps along the way to the end. Maybe I wouldn't be feeling some of these guys so much if I dug into their Spotify pages, but mixed together in this soup, it all works. And anyway, B's scratch hooks are the real stars in this sky.
This is available digitally wherever, but the limited edition CD can be ordered direct from his site or on Bandcamp. A nice bonus there is that the track-listing, on the case and online, lists 14 tracks; but when you pop the disc in, there's 24. That's because he's added the instrumentals for nine of the vocal songs (skipping "Bad Wreck" and "Flowing," for the record) as uncredited bonus tracks, which I believe are only available on the physical release.
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