Distant Relatives

Yo, so first up: Sorry about last week, what can I say? I guess the new owners of Cocomo weren't up for some rad tunes. We will have a new venue sorted quick sharp, so worry not my friend.

On Friday I was planning on playing at least one track from the excellent collaborative album by Nas & Damian Marley; Distant Relatives. This is one of my favourite albums at the moment. In my opinon it's the perfect mix of hip-hop and reggae, contemporary but with a classic vibe. You might have already heard the single, As we enter:

I was planning on reviewing this album when it first came out, but instead I just hung around my flat like a stale fart. Well I'm doing it now.
The whole album has an African vibe, with lots of references to the hopes, troubles and common bonds beetween Black People across the world. If you didn't get the title Nas and DM have helpfuly put an image of Africa between their faces on the cover. The second track of the album projects quite a negative image of Africa; Tribes at War, featuring the Somalian rapper K'Naan:

The tone and tempo of the album rise and fall through out as does the level of hip-hop and reggae of each track, but they all sound good. The lyrical content of the album doesn't only dwell on Africa's problems, with Count your blessings and My Generation being particularly inspiring. Another good one is the final track Africa must wake up:


I was going to review another couple of albums Battle of the Sexes by Ludacris and Rebirth by Lil Wayne, but they're both so wack I can't really be bothered. Battle of the Sexes is just mediocre commercial hip-hop, but Rebirth is proper bad. There is one good track on Rebirth, angry colaboration with Eminem: Drop The world, which is the reason I thought the album might be good.

The rest of the album is laughably bad, it's a real arse-hat. Seriously what was he thinking? Lil Wayne has tried moving towards rock/metal and has made a real dog's dinner of it. He's mixed some shitty Kid Rock-Nickleback rock with rubbish 50 Cent rapping and a bit of awful auto-tune singing for good measure. It makes me want to take the CD out and hit it with a hammer (shame I downloaded it).