There is a lot of derivative hip-hop out there, and even worse is the insane amounts of derivative rap. Thankfully Dead Poets don’t fall into that category for the most part. Instead of throwing themselves in the Jay-Z direction or the Jurassic 5 direction, they have decided to forge their own direction, with some serious aplomb. Made up of MidKnyte and Lazarus this duo really knows how to throw a verbal punch.
For the most part these songs smack of the kind of battle hymns that you expect from hip-hop in general, but there are a few real surprises on this album (other than the fact that they aren’t just copying someone else), the first being track “Tickled Pink,” a bit of a rap love song that is set to the tone of the kind of reggae hip hop that has really sprung up as of late, and it is spot on without sounding like it is out of place on an album that has no other tracks like it. Another surprise is the beat loop on “Step Up,” now the soul vocals tracked into the beat of a song isn’t really something super original, but this takes it to a level that I have a hard time ignoring. Where normally it is thrown in to just kind of give a song a soulful sound the track is actually worked into the framework of the song without being horribly obtrusive. This is the kind of smooth beat layouts that have to be every MC’s dream.
There is a kind of symmetry between Laz and Knyte that really makes this album pop, and that really displays the fact that they have the kind of experience that you need to make an impression in a very over saturated market. One can hope that they keep making this level of album and that they begin to really refine their own sound into something that is uniquely Dead Poets.
Reviewed By Gabriel Llanas
