Aceyalone

Acey's third solo album finds the Freestyle Fellowship member slightly less abstract but still lyrically on-point. Producers include Joey Chavez, Evidence (Dilated Peoples) and Fat Jack; longtime collaborators P.E.A.C.E. and Abstract Rude provide guest verses. "Five Feet," "Microphones," and "I Got To Have It Too" are standouts.

While most hip-hop fans wouldn't know Aceyalone from Joe (or Kurtis) Blow, the veteran
rapper stands tall as godfather of the L.A. underground that produced acts such as Dilated
Peoples, Jurassic-5 and, to some extent, Eminem. In the early Nineties, Acey's Freestyle
Fellowship quietly stretched hip-hop's boundaries, using songcraft, inventive beats and
precise, dynamic rhyme flows. As subsequent solo efforts brought meager com... More >

Popsymp enough to consider this an improvement over the far from awful The Book of Human Language (featuring "The Balance," "The Hurt," "The Vision," etc.), I'm also streetsymp enough to hear how smug some might find the sensible moralizing and carousel hooks of "Master Your High"--and people person enough to think "Five Feet," named for the distance he wants to keep between him and you, is priggish. Still, most of these 16 tracks are sensible, moral, and hooky. And many are fun as well. Ten years a cult hero and his passion for rhyme is unabated. It would be priggish to deny him. (Grade - B+)