Categories : Music Reviews, Rap + Hip-Hop, Top Rated.
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Rating: 4/5 Released: October 30, 2007 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
Buck65’s last album, Secret House Against the World, was a conscious step away from his hip-hop roots. The album was overwhelmed by an ambitious combination of roots-folk, spoken word and a foundation of guitar, drums and piano rarely found in his native genre. For Situation, though, Buck is back into hip-hop in a serious way.
Even though Buck brings back the break-beats, he’s not about to start rapping about rims and jewellery. Situation was inspired by Buck’s fixation with the year 1957, though the album hardly plays like a period piece or a concept album. The only overt sign of this connective thread is the song ‘1957,’ which is an obsessive list of events from the titular year, including pop-culture references like “playwright Arthur Miller marries Marilyn Monroe.â€
The rest of the album is happily just what you’d expect from Buck65 – a collection of unbelievably imaginative characters and situations, accompanied by word association of the highest order. ‘Spread ‘Em’ imagines a gruff cop from a cheesy TV drama, while ‘Shutter Buggin’’ starts off with what sounds like an uninspired photographer, only to reveal that his business isn’t necessarily on the conventional side of the photography industry.
Buck65’s songs play out like mini-movies, cramming character development, setting and motivation into three and a half minutes epics. Situation is another worthy addition of wordplay and imagination to his already impressive body of work.
