[.ca] Higher Forces

There's Better But There's A Lot Worse:
This album leaves me with very mixed feelings. I really want to like it but just don't really. The sound is good, reasonably original and oddly compelling samples laid over a crisp but basically boring set of baselines with adequately talented rhymes and scratching courtesy of Mr. Thing, but it never really takes off. The basic formula of each song doesn't really take it anywhere, it just hovers on the same level for minutes at a time, and it's the scratching or a lucky mid-song breakdown that usually relieves the listener from sleeping. Luckily, this CD doesn't ventures into my own personal hell of Psychoticpop-hophatredland like so many other recent "rap" acts but it treads the line sometimes. There are a lot of "I'm a rebel, smoking sensemillia, baddest MC you've ever heard" lyrics seeded throughout but they are off-set, line for line, with socially aware and intelligent views. It just doesn't come off as well as the Non-Prophets. The East Indian rapping, making annoying noises style of Skit-Slam, the "ning-ning-ning-ning-woy" specifically reminiscent of Snow and generally of Shaggy, doesn't help their cause too much. I just can't get into it, or any of the MC's for that matter, which is sad because one can't choose his/her voice any more than you can choose your skin colour, but the effort is highly respectable. The beats remind me of Slum Village insofar as a standard, flat snare permeates throughout the album tap for tap with simply constructed, constantly repeating basslines and a light string or classic funk loop. For a group trying to raise awareness and open minds, they push no boundaries, take no unexpected stands, and is ultimately dry though well produced and catchy. Their message is pretty much lost in the style it was recorded.

• Higher Forces
• Seek & Destroy
• Overemix
• Rap It Up
• Real Raw
• The Desert
• War
• War of Words ‘Merciles’
• Skit. The Drive
• Free
• Cypher Refunk
• The Three
• Big Sound
• Ending Force