New Music Reviews - 8/9/2011 - Jay-Z & Kanye West, Pepper Rabbit, and New Mastersounds

Jay-Z & Kanye West Watch the Throne - Modern hip-hop masters Jay-Z and Kanye West combine efforts to release a new album of collaborative raps and funky beats.  Is it me or does the cover and title of the album seem somewhat pretentious?  Well, given the self-assured, bordering on outlandish, natures of the two stars I guess it makes sense.  Let's hope they kept their egos in check enough to produce some quality music on this 16-track release that also features a handful of guest artists like Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield, and (of course) the obligatory Beyonce sung song.  This album was made available on iTunes beginning yesterday and will be available in all other retail outlets starting this Friday. 

The album opens slowly with "No Church in the Wild" (featuring Frank Ocean) which features a cool bass line and beat but doesn't really go anywhere.  The other song featuring Ocean (appearing much later in the album), "Made In America," has a sweet and infectious melody that really showcases Ocean's smooth crooning tenor.

The album really starts to take off for me with "Otis" which is built on the classic Otis Redding song "Try A Little Tenderness" but adds alternating raps by West and Jay-Z that shows their genius in both creating and manipulating music.  "Why I Love You" is another sweeping track where Jay-Z's verbal play about being king and watching the throne matches Kanye-heavy orchestral backing music by showcasing both a playful and a serious side. 

Watch the Throne is a great album and will be one of the best hip-hop album to be released this year.  It's not flawless by any means with the album failing to find it's footing towards the beginning but what flaws there are end up being very small when viewed from afar while the bright spots can be blinding at times.  They manage to cover a wide range of subjects over the 68-minute disc including, but not limited to, religion, poverty, and the cost of success with much verbal aplomb and clever wordplay.

Perhaps the biggest concern when you get two musicians of this magnitude recording together is their ability to rein in and blend their varying styles competently.  Early on it seems like the two artists are still struggling to find that balance but after the first couple of songs not only do Kanye and Jay-Z make beautiful music together they also do so in a way that combines their styles into a joyful union that at times transcends what they could do individually.  An instant classic destined to win lots of Grammy's next year. 

Score: 9/10
Song(s) to Sample: "Otis" [sample it below], "Why I Love You," and "Who Gon Stop Me"

Pepper Rabbit Red Velvet Snow Ball - Pepper Rabbit is a indie pop/experimental duo from Silver Lake, CA.  This ten track release features a downtempo psychedelic pop with lush instrumentation by incorporating eleven instruments in composing their melodies.  Songs like "Family Planning" and "In Search of Simon Birch" feature a slow tempo but the wide variety of instruments and well-layered tunes have a quality that will sweep you along at times for a very pleasant and surprising journey.  Comparably, I would say their music is part Friendly Fires and part Shins with a more doleful overall feeling to the album.  I do wish there was more variety on this sophomore release as this is not a disc you'd want playing to cheer you up but for those in a melancholy mood, I can think of few 2011 releases that would be as apt. 

Score: 7/10
Song(s) to Sample: "Family Planning" and "Rose Mary Stretch" [sample it below]

The New Mastersounds Breaks from the Border - The New Mastersounds is a four person funk band from Leeds, England.  Although they've released about a dozen albums since they formed about a dozen years ago, this is the first one to be recorded in the U.S.  For a modern funk band, the music presented on this release has a real throwback feel to a Ohio Players/James Brown era of music.  The guitar work is more than competent and the rest of the musicians perform adequately but the production work makes the disc sound very dated and not in a positive way like the most recent Raphael Saadiq album.  Diehard funk fans can add two points to my score but there are virtually no new-sounding or standout songs on this album that helps differentiate it from past funk albums.

Score: 5/10
Song(s) to Sample: "On the Border"