![]() ![]() Standouts include Quincey Tones' layered, r&b flavored jams, "Traffic" and "U Let Me Grow", The ARE's "Leak It Out", a disco and golden era-hybrid banger, and Nicolay on "E.M.C. The album's consistent, unpretentious beats have been culled from producers from all over the world (Croatia, the UK, Houston). "In this ice-cold world, better get ya'll coats/ I'm a husband, a father, and a football coach," raps Ace, and Strick adds: "You might be sick of me complaining and hearing me sob/ But it's kind of hard trying to juggle my career and my job/ Cause whether it's the m-i-c or an IV/ They be calling me, 'Notorious EMT.'" That's just sick, and Money Harm's chorus may well bring you to tears if your girl's not around. "Feel It" sketches the group members' lives without self-pity or glorification. It's a Sopranos-like non-ending, and Ladybug Mecca's robotic, GPS-voice chorus just makes the whole thing crazier. They drive to the venue, do a sound check, and Strick takes a shit "at 9:20." They eat some chicken and then perform. Next, Ace tells us that he has stretched, showered, and shaved. "Got to town at like a quarter to three/ 3:30, still in the lobby, waiting on my room key/ 4:00, I'm in my room watching TV," Strick raps with comic urgency on the title track. Its details are so mundane at times that those used to hip-hop melodrama may be taken aback. Sixteen meaty songs strong, the album is part slightly-fictionalized tour diary, part rumination on unrealized success and finding fun in the day-to-day. I found him annoying for about five minutes, but now can't get enough of his giddy verses, like this one on "Borrow You": "When I first saw you ma I was like/ 'Now, this a girl I can't mess with/ Out my league like them dudes I play chess with'/ Then I was like, 'What the hell, let me test it/ Hi, my name's Stricklin but you can call me interested/ You got a man, but he not like me'/ She said, 'Man? What, nigga? Yo, I got, like, three.'" But the show is stolen (no pun intended) by the least known member of the group, Milwaukee MC Stricklin, whose high-pitched, sometimes spastic rhymes are laced with self-deprecation, naivety, and humor. ![]()
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