I heard about Tech N9ne (pronounced Tech NINE) via word of mouth, or word of message board. I have been on a BIG hip-hop kick lately, listening to Royce Da 5'9"'s new CD Success Is Certain, Yelawolf's Trunk Muzik 0-60, Bad Meets Evil's Hell: the Sequel and Jay Z and Kanye West's new collaboration album Watch The Throne. I'm not going to review that particular CD here because I'm afraid my review might be tainted by the fact that I think Kanye West is a giant
But Tech N9ne. Holy SHIT. Where do I start? With the mohawk, maybe? AWESOME!
Anyway, a little investigating told me that he is an independent artist, and this album bounced onto the Billboard Top 200 chart at number four on it's debut in June of this year. I went to YouTube and watched the video for He's A Mental Giant, and at first I thought the title suggested that somebody was too big for his britches, but I was quickly proven wrong. He was just being honest. And I had to have the rest of the CD.
He is a lyricist of the highest order with a flow that made me want to continue to put each song on repeat until I'd wrung out every possible drop of poetic insanity that Tech N9ne has to offer. He is an intelligent rapper, clever with words, rhyme schemes and subject matter. Often his message is dark, but this in no way overshadows his talent or comes off as gimmicky. His flow is FAST and the beats that he uses to transport his inner most thoughts and feelings into that extending axon-less grey matter that we call our noodles makes each and every one of our lobes vibrate. Fuck Food is a sick song, and has guest appearances from Lil' Wayne and T-Pain who both have become seemingly ubiquitous presences in hip-hop these days. He's A Mental Giant is a standout here, as is Mama Nem. These are just my favorites from the cd. I'd have to say that the entire fucking thing is good and has an amazing replay-ability factor, judging by the amount of times I've replayed it in the last day or so since I've had it. I will say DO NOT BUY AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS CD. You'll be completely confused as I'm sure half of it will be bleeped or whatever the fuck they do to edit music these days. If you're offended by strong language, you probably need to remove the two-by-four from your donkey-donk anyway.
I've read some really scathing posts about Tech N9ne and his willingness to collaborate with "pop rap" or mainstream rappers to get his album sold. (He fucking collaborated with the Deftones on If I Could from this CD. He gets massive, MASSIVE brownie points from me for even knowing who they are.) I bet anyone who gets this CD is going to be 90% likely to look up his other albums, and I doubt we'll be disappointed. Did he sell out? Probably... every fucking copy of this CD that they pressed. And he deserves it.
On a scale of zero to ten stars with zero being the worst, this cd gets TEN STARS.
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See the video for He's A Mental Giant on YouTube
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Buy Tech N9ne - All 6's and 7's from amazon.com. Album also available in mp3 format. I don't know jack or shit about iTunes, so I couldn't tell you if it's available there or not.
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