Review Summary: While Revolutions Per Minute is nowhere near the quality of the duo's debut, it is still an enjoyable-enough listen
Ten years ago, the Twin towers were still standing, porn was a lot harder to find on the web (Seriously, kids are handed everything these days, it's so unfair), and I was still an innocent boy in Elementry School, and wasn't as lazy as I am now, which explains why I won't bother to find other important events that changed the face of the world in this ten-year span. What I do know is that during these ten years, there has not been a single Reflection Eternal album. It is pretty rare for a group (or here, a duo) to wait that long before reuniting, especially when their first album has as great a quality as Reflection Eternal's own
Train of Thought, which I regard as a modern Hip-Hop classic. Talib Kweli, the MC, and DJ Hi-Tek, the Producer, are the two members of Reflection Eternal, and have said that their busy agendas haven't let them get enough time to get together and work on their reunion album. So here we are, ten years after
Train of Thought, with their new album entitled
Revolutions Per Minutes.
The one question you want answered when you start bumping
Revolutions Per Minute is if the chemistry present between Hi-Tek and Kweli throughout their first album is still strong or not ? While the two still work pretty well together, the result doesn't feel as cohesive and soulful as its predecessor. While the cohesive part can be easily forgiven since it doesn't drag the album down that much (The album actually isn't uncohesive, it just doesn't flow as much as it probably could), the soulful part is quite disappointing comming from these two artists. While this might certainly been in part to the fact that I started listening to this expecting a new Train of Thought-like album, I still think a lot of beats on this feel empty and basically souless, in that they don't manage to create an atmosphere to the album.
The album starts out with "RPMs", an intro talking about the replacement of vinyls and CDs, which are measured by the concept of revolutions, to the digital support prefered nowadays, and frankly this intro is pretty much useless as it doesn't set any kind of concept for the album, which doesn't talk about this subject at all. It does have a pretty cool and very chill beat, so the intro does start the album off pretty good as far as the musical aspect goes. As with most Talib Kweli albums, the focus is mostly put on conscious songs, with some of them succeeding where others don't. Kweli thrives in songs in which the focus is put on one particular topic, as is the case in "Ballad Of The Black Gold", which is, as you could guess, dealing with oil and its effects on geopolitics and the populations concerned with the war over oil. The result is one of the album's best tracks, laced with a wonderful and deep beat mixing horns, bells and voice samples to a magnificient result. Talib Kweli spits some of the most conscious lyrics of the album :
"Nigeria is celebrating 50 years of independence
They still feel the colonial effects of Great Britain's presence
Dictators quick to imitate the West
Got in bed with oil companies and now the place is a mess
Take a guess, which ones came and violated
They oiled up the soil, the Ogoni people was almost annihilated"
The duo also demonstrates the kind of focus they can have in "Got Work", in which Kweli speaks about fame and all its drawbacks over a spacey beat which creates the perfect atmosphere for the subject of the song, although the repetitive chorus does drag the whole down a bit, or even on "Lifting Off", in which Kweli surprisingly makes a good weed song, which is something you wouldn't expect from the Brooklyn MC (though he is really helped by the great chill-out beat). Unfortunately, Kweli sometimes loses the focus that makes some of the songs great when he tries to touch too many subjects at the same time and ends up saying basically nothing, as is the case in the album's first single "In This World", in which the rapper talks about the recession, black power, but also how dope of an MC he is, on top of which is added a sample taken from Jay-Z's "Moment of Clarity" ("If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be, lyrically Talib Kweli"), which creats a sloppy mess of a song, which goes in every direction without ending anwhere. As far as Hi-Tek goes, a lot of the beats aren't memorable, some ending up as extremely repetitive ("City Playgrounds").
Although the conscious lyrics and the topics discussed are the main assets of
Revolutions Per Minutes, the rapping isn't left behind. While Kweli keeps the level of wordplay he has had throughout his career and doesn't take too many risks (which doesn't mean he raps poorly, far from that), the guests are really a plus on that part, as each rapper appearing on this album delivers a great and memorable performance, motivating Kweli to step his game up a notch and creating great songs in the process. Bun-B comes up with a ridiculous flow on "Strangers (Paranoid)", with Kweli also delivering a great verse. But the real gem here is "Just Begun", which sees fellow Black Star member and frequent collaborator Mos Def and up-and-commers Jay Electronica and J.Cole spitting on a great soulful beat served by Hi-Tek. The result is an epic collaboration between the four MCs, each spitting excellent verses (Particularly the non-Black Star members). I would have liked to quote the best parts here, but that would mean adding a lot of lines to an already long review, so I suggest you just listen to the song, trust me it's worth the 3:36 minutes.
Unfortunately, I can't finish this review without talking about another collaboration, this time with pop-singer Estelle. The song, "Midnight Hour", kicks of with a cringe-worthy intro, and sets off an equally terrible song about a girl waiting for his man to come back howe while sh's alone (Sounds boring uh ? Yeah, it is). The beat is also pretty weak, and I end up skipping this song as soon as I hear the first glimpse of Estelle's voice.
While
Revolutions Per Minute is nowhere near the quality of the duo's debut, it is still an enjoyable-enough listen for Hip-Hop fans, but I wouldn't recommend it if you're not a Hip-Hop fan and wouldn't say it is a must-listen other than for Kweli fans.
