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By Sylvain - HipHopSection.com
Left discreetly on Jazz Fudge, English label created by DJ Vadim, one of the Masters of the abstract hip hop, Balance is, without the least exaggeration, one of all the best albums produced to date by international the hip hop underground. Forts of a relevant and ensured rap, Swollen Members (MCs Prevail and Madchild, the Zodak producer), Canadian trio based in Vancouver, knew to draw advantage from a impressionant plate of prestigious guests come to lend strong hand to them.
In addition to Everlast, only media figure here presents, hustle on Balance anything less than LED (of Hieroglyphics), Saafir (of Hobo Junction), Mixmaster Mike (of Invisbl Skratch Piklz), Kutmasta Kurt (producing of Kool Keith), all resulting from Bay Area, thus qu?Evidence and Iriscience (of Dilated Peoples) and Aceyalone de Freestyle Fellowship, based in Los Angeles. In short, all that a large West coast, which would extend to Canada, offers of more just and convincing.
Meetings at the top of this kind were already used as mask-misery with bad discs. In the case of Balance , it of it is nothing. If Swollen Members, contrary to their companions of labels (Isolationists, for example), do not revolutionize the hip hop, they deliver of it a brilliance prototype, the most succeeded version: always square, direct, percussion; sometimes touching. The diversity of the guests, the very broad choice of the samples, the frequent variations between minimalists compositions enriched by an effective production and be delirious them scratchés of some turntablists, allow the album never enliser, never to be delayed on a too tested receipt. Without transforming themselves either into Spanish inn and losing its consistency.
In short, in spite of a very light loss of mode on a few pieces, Balance is marked seal of the large albums. Very large albums. Useless to quote the wonders of them: 15 or 16 of the 20 beaches which count this long disc are nothing less than époustouflantes. No doubt that after such a head of work, each new exit of the rap independent Canadian will thoroughly be peeled by informed criticism.
August 1999 [HipHopSection.com]