If Jonah Bromwich plans to bank his shot in, he calls it as loud as possible.
Lately, when you see the name Blu, you unfortunately expect to hear more crackle than lyrics. Dude just can’t get with any kind of decent sound quality –he just released two full albums of barely listenable music. That’s why, when you hear the sharpness of the strings as “Backboards” ramps up, if you were a full No York stan like me, you get Chris Matthews excited. (The beat, by the way, is borrowed from Bronson’s new, equally exciting, “Pouches of Tuna”).
Blu’s so casually agile with his flow, that it’s always a surprise when you try to take a syllable count and hear the rush of air as the individual beats rush past you like D. Rose. The shedding of his early conscious persona has only made way for a rapper far more versatile, able to rap circles around a fully-formed idea faster than it takes most rhymesayers to gambol on up to the plate. Yes, Blu is a two sport athlete.
Sene sounds motivated too, leaving behind the silly shit (WonThousandGirls, etc.) and spitting nicely. He pare down his breaks with skill, cramming lines like “P.S., yes these are PF’s, my peeps’ll never be the bleacher creatures screamin’ we next,” into only a couple of bars. Meanwhile, the strings keep on and on, and the kids chant in falsetto on the chorus, nodding their heads in unison. See, Blu? Audibility is all it takes to get those heads moving up and down like, “yes, yes.”
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