video review: '3001: a laced odyssey' by flatbush zombies

Man, I wish I had liked this album more... eh, it happens. Good, not great.

Next up... whoa, suddenly my schedule filled up fast, so let's see if I can finally finish this Mount Moriah review before Denzel Curry and so many more - stay tuned!

album review: '3001: a laced odyssey' by flatbush zombies

I don't tend to cover many mixtapes, if I do at all.

And believe it or not, I actually have my reasons. I do recognize that some artists - especially in hip-hop - will release some great work on mixtapes, and that if you're not on top of the mixtape scene, you can fall behind on who has buzz, especially in the Internet age. Now that's not saying I don't occasionally listen to mixtapes that get sent my way, but if I covered every tape that gets dropped or sent to me, I wouldn't be covering any other genres besides hip-hop. And let's be brutally honest: while you can argue that there are a few artists who defined or redefined their best work on tapes, the majority use them as a cheap stopgap to drive buzz in an industry where hype is more fleeting than ever before. That's why I have a lot of respect for artists who might drop less records and overall projects, but the ratio of quality tracks to filler or garbage is more consistent.

But what this has meant is that while I've heard about Flatbush Zombies, a New York hip-hop trio out of Brooklyn affiliated with The Underachievers and Pro Era, known for a kooky style of flow and delivery that careens through smoky production with bars that manage to stick more than I expected, I hadn't really explored many of their projects in detail beyond a few singles. And while they had a few mixtapes and that collaboration EP with The Underachievers, 2015 had been a very quiet year for the Flatbush Zombies, which made the announcement about this record probably more of a surprise than it should have been, at least for me. But I figured now was as good of a time as any to dig in, so what did I get?