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| Pitchfork |
Coming from an underground MC who made his name alongside the likes of Blackalicious and DJ Shadow, As U Were's mainstream pop lean is downright shocking. Take "We Live By the Beat", which works soul-driven horns and a strobe-lit Euro-house hook (complete with Euro-house chanteuse) into a hometown hyphy track. What looks like a mess on paper meshes convincingly on the floor. And even when these amalgamations falter, you still have to admire the ambition. One near miss is the single "Lies X 3", which has less impact than it hopes for, sounding like a Hall & Oates tune all jacked-up on Bob Fosse swagger. And maybe the Timbaland move on "I Wanna B W/U" feels a little discount, and the sci-fi prog-rock posturing on "I'm the Best (Funky Fresh in the Flesh)" a little soggy. But that still can't cloud Shimura's giddy energy. Though most of As U Were shows little interest in staying true to any one form for too long, it's easy to understand why Shimura doesn't consider "crowd-pleasing" to be a dirty phrase. He seems happy to find himself in the company of forward-thinking artists with retro-minded fundamentals, à la Janelle Monáe....full text |
| Avclub |
| This just in: Rapper discovers synthesizers, makes album! On his latest, As U Were, Bay Area backpack-rap pioneer Lyrics Born imagines himself as he never was: the rapping, scatting, singing, high-energy frontman of a synth-pop/nü-funk band just waiting for its close-up. For nearly two decades, he’s had a golden reputation in the underground, not only for helping found the Quannum Projects label with DJ Shadow and Blackalicious, but for his inimitable flow—a raspy, jazz-inflected thing that can shift gears effortlessly from rich crooning to triple-time multi-syllabic flow with nary a bump. But it wouldn’t hurt him to slow his roll here. Most of the record is spent on blithe, fruitless trips down other people’s styles. For “Kontrol Phreak,” he’s Cee-Lo over an electro groove. (Remember “Closet Freak”?) On “I Wanna B W/U,” he’s Justin Timberlake for the chorus and Tone Loc for the verse. He does the Latin freestyle thing on “We Live By The Beat,” and a pitch-perfect Nate Dogg on “Coulda Woulda Shoulda.” The single, “Lies X 3” actually sounds like George Michael meets Nine Inch Nails. That last one’s actually pretty great, though, and when Born dives into darker territory, all the keyboard bluster and big-band groove takes on a third dimension. (See also the cautionary cocaine tale “I’ve Lost Myself,” and the Gift Of Gab-assisted “Pillz.”) Still, nothing sounds fresher than “Something Better,” his collaboration with New York soul subverters Francis And The Lights, which raises the question “Why wasn’t that the starting point?”...full text |
| Hiphopdx |
| On paper 1997’s Latyrx was an album that should not have worked. Its title was a hybrid of the names of the Bay Area artists who joined forces on the project, Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truth Speaker. These two emcees from DJ Shadow’s Solesides crew had flows so idiosyncratic that at times you’d find yourself asking, “Can I even call this rapping?” But that was what was so phenomenal about the project. Both rhymers could go from sleepy drawls to sing-song rants jam-packed with so much Pynchon-inspired stream of consciousness that the included lyrics sheet was both a necessity and a joy to follow along with. Add to the mix a backdrop of murky Funk provided by Shadow, Chief Xcel and Lyrics Born himself, and you have a near-perfect album that still sounds ahead of its time. Unfortunately the innovation of Latyrx just magnifies the messy As U Were, the newest full length from Lyrics Born. As U Were fails as both an exercise in Electro-nostalgia and as a stylistic departure from an emcee who shouldn’t need any departure since his own style is so inherently unique. The album has the best of intentions but comes with too little too late, in a year where Cee-Lo Green and the late Camu Tao have made similar genre-bending efforts. This an album that simultaneously manages to sound candy-coated and watered down. Even the skits don’t offer much of a respite. How many times have we heard an album’s artist riffing with the voice of a slimy record label exec who is trying to convince him to sound less “street” and more “Pop”? The problem here is that it sounds like Lyrics Born actually lost the argument. On songs like “We Live By The Beat,” LB’s voice struggles to rise above layer upon layer of unnecessary electro fluff while he scrambles to pull back a beat that ends up swallowing it’s own creator. The vocals on “I’ve Lost Myself” come across as basically yelling as he once again strains to reach the higher registers through an overload of plug-in effects. What’s worse is that the guest vocalist singing the chorus is given a rich boost to flow loud and clear over the mix. Not only does this break any cohesiveness but it makes Lyrics Born sound like that much less of the proven vocalist he is. And trying to “really” sing is something this album refuses to give up on so much so that it ends up feeling downright uncomfortable. Even as a guilty pleasure, As U Were comes up short as moments like the scatting on “Oh Baby” proves that cheese can still spoil. The rhyming style that Cameo adopted often started sounding tired halfway into Cameo albums. So it’s inevitable than an emcee relying on more of the same will have a hard time keeping the listener on his side....full text |
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