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MH-235 Busdriver - Fear Of A Black Tangent  With the most cohesive work of his career, Busdriver turns his razor sharp wit on his place in the music industry with his new full-length release, Fear Of A Black Tangent. It is the follow-up to his career establishing release, Temporary Forever. Songs covering small club touring, independent music promotion, and the barrage of uninspired hip-hop releases on the market all contribute to the album's theme of trying to break as a emerging artist. Busdriver has taken a year's worth of material and trimmed it down to thirteen impressive tracks that range from lightning fast Project Blowed style raps to sing-song pop. The album features production by Daedelus, Danger Mouse, Thavius Beck, Omid, and Paris Zax and has guest appearances by fellow Project Blowed MCs Abstract Rude, Ellay Khule, Mikah-9, and 2Mex. |
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| Reviews Summary |
| Outstanding - Urb / Genius - BBC / Experimental and fresh - Hip-Hop Connection / Intoxicating - Straight No Chaser / Decidedly cool and deadly - XLR8R / Treads where most wouldn't dare - DJ / Busdriver straight kills it - Hour / Certainly the best I've heard in a long time - Indigo Flow |
| Imagine if Afrocentrist poet and playwright Amiri Baraka was born about a half century late and instead of a pen he carried a mic. The result would be something quite like quirky and eccentric emcee Busdriver, part hip-hop bohemian ("I used to be on the list of top five fresh hip-hop guys"), angry unappreciated Baraka-esque intellectual ("No one wants to hear me retrace my ancestry from a transatlantic boat cruise / They want to hear my frantic energy diffused through ProTools") part anti-scene demagogue ("Rappers say the darndest things you'll ever hear / Like I'm edgy and risque and I say better luck next year") and two parts pure lyrical ability ("I dumbfound in the coffee shop / Looking like Jean Michel-Basquiat"). Few microphone musicians can spit as quickly and as intelligently - the aforementioned couplets are delivered rapid fire, almost too quickly for the brain to process before the next obscure name-drop or poetic reference. Such has been Busdriver's claim to fame - or to the cynical, the gimmick that sustains an otherwise tired act. Either way, it's kept coming at a steady pace: a prolific artist, Fear of a Black Tangent is Busdriver's third full-length in a little under two years. The production duties are carried out admirably by several "big" (by underground standards, anyway) names - Danger Mouse and Daedelus among them, and their varied efforts - some glitchy, some jazzy - all seem well-suited to match Busdriver's manic pace and frame of mind. - The Brainwashed Brain |
1XLP/Out Of Print