Showing posts with label m.e.d.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label m.e.d.. Show all posts

Saturday, November 7, 2015

video review: 'bad neighbor' by med, blu & madlib


Man, this record was disappointing, especially given the real talent behind it. Eh, you can't win them all.

Okay, as I said at the end of the video, next up is Little Mix, so stay tuned!

album review: 'bad neighbor' by med, blu & madlib

You ever hear about projects that sound like easy wins in theory but don't end up sticking the landing quite as well as you'd like in reality, perhaps tripped up by their own ambition or artistic choices? Well, if we're looking for two rappers where that might well be the case, M.E.D. and Blu are two examples. Now I've talked about Blu in the past when I reviewed his pretty damn great record Good To Be Home last year, and there's been rumours he had put something together with Madlib as early as 2012, when Blu released the project UCLA for a short time before pulling it when Madlib denied any involvement. But putting that aside, Blu's brand of pseudo-conscious and layered bars would probably be a solid as hell fit against Madlib's more soulful and eccentric production. 

Believe it or not, I was more worried about M.E.D., who had actually worked with Madlib on previous albums as a fellow member of Stones Throw Records, but had run into diminishing returns when his bars didn't quite rise to the level of the excellent production he was getting from producers like Oh No, Just Blaze, and even Dilla. And it wasn't like his monotone was bad - I listen to LMNO and Evidence, that sort of flow and delivery can work - but his rhymes could just feel more awkward than they should against that production, and his content wasn't anything all that special to me.

So when I heard that M.E.D., Blu, and Madlib were teaming up for a collaborative record, with features from MF Doom, Anderson .Paak, Aloe Blacc, Hodgy Beats, Oh No, and even Mayer Hawthorne of all people, I was interested but a little concerned. I expected Blu to fit right at home against Madlib's production - providing, of course, he didn't get lazy, and brought the lyricism that worked so well on Good To Be Home - but had M.E.D. improved enough as an MC to stand out? And would it even matter if he had - most collaboration albums like this feel more like an excuse to sit back, chill, and trade bars, so with the understanding the content was probably going to be nothing groundbreaking, what did we get?