Album Reviews

Album Reviews

Eminem - The Slim Shady LP

Hip Hop is the initial genre I dived into when I was focusing on music as an art form, but I never touched an Eminem project up until this very month (September). As soon as I focused on this album, I wasn't let down at all.

This album is simply Eminem introducing himself to the world on a mainstream scale (with added help from veteran Dr Dre) and by this album alone, he proves that he not only is he a skilled rapper, he's also very different to just about every other rapper at the time. Not only confident, but comfortable with talking about obscure and "eyebrow raising" content (reference to "Brain Damage" & "As The World Turns") which I personally find all of it rather funny, then talk about something that can be very thought provoking, depending on how focused you are on the song (refer to "If I Had").

One thing that I really like about this album is how there's only 5 people who worked on the production of the whole album (Eminem himself, Dr Dre, Mel-Man & Bass Brothers) and I like this because it means those on production all have a similar image of what the album should sound like rather than having album with production by a list of producers because a lot of people are attempting this recently and it makes it sound more like a compilation of songs rather than an album, however (to my knowledge) only one album with 10 tracks has over 5 producers and got away with it like day light robbery: Nas' debut album "Illmatic".

Couple things I've noticed. I'm glad I left it till later to listen to Eminem because I can hear him in a lot of other rappers whether it's flow, the rhyme scheme, content selection, etc. That also made me realize just how much his style had an influence on the majority of rappers today. Another thing is that if I decided to listen to his stuff when I wasn't as "open minded" to music in general, then I wouldn't of appreciated Eminem as much as I would right now.

Aphex Twin - Syro

In my opinion, I think music is going to become very different in comparison to the 50 years that just passed because we're evolving at such a crazy rate (with big help from electricity) that we're simply going to get bored of what we already have and just craft new ideas out of nothing. We're living in a day and age where people with a computer can call themselves a musician, however a lot of those people aren't able to display what's in their mind and translate it perfectly to the computer. Aphex Twin is not one of those people.

Aphex Twin is one of those guys who's pushing the limit as to what we can call "music" these days. I still can't label this album with an already existing genre because Aphex Twin is simply experimenting with what he can do. The first track is very house-like (minipops 67) and the last track is such a laid back piece of music that you can get sucked into your seat on a sunday (aisatsana) and then everything else in the middle is something you can discover yourself. One thing I do like about Aphex is that all his projects have a different distinct sound so he always surprises his core fans who expected Syro to sound like songs such as "Windowlicker" and songs from his last album "Drukqs" (released in 2001).

I personally think that the music Aphex Twin is making, along with countless other people who're making music you can label under the same category, can be considered as today's jazz music. Initially, the public won't understand it because it doesn't sound like "music" to their ears, much like how jazz sounded like someone hitting random notes back in the 30s/40s. It's simply "musicians music".

(Sadly, the Syro album is available on youtube but only as a playlist and not one video.)