Send "Vast Aire " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Hiphopdx |
 The 15-track LP's aggressive boom-bap backdrop and sinister cypher rhymes harken the days when street records ran the airwaves. At it's best, it's refreshing.There’s an inherent nostalgia to Vast Aire’s OX 2010: A Street Odyssey. Not only does the title strategically allude to his seminal debut, The Cold Vein (as part of duo Cannibal OX with Vordul Mega), but the 15-track LP’s aggressive boom-bap backdrop and sinister cypher rhymes harken the days when street records ran the airwaves. At it’s best, it’s refreshing. “This is the kind of life I live / We gonna put you to sleep and take your rib / We gonna fondle your wife in front of your kids,” raps Vast Aire over Kount Fif’s brolic snare on “The Man Of Steel.” Fif delivers again on “Nomad,” mixing a rumbling gem layered lovely with blippy, electronic intonations. It sounds as if it’s designed for teleportation - or at least for disregarding the speed-limit. Aire’s innate eccentricity and metaphor-loaded lyrical utility belt keeps OX 2010 engaging despite it’s limited contextual range. His Addams Family extended reference on “Merry Go Round” - a Surock-produced soundtrack to VA’s twisted carnival - is a bit sloppy. But his Incredible Hulk/Deon Sanders flip on “Phenom” (produced by Harry Fraud) just may be the album’s finest:...full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Cannibal Ox's 2001 debut, The Cold Vein, continues to stand as an indie-rap masterpiece. The duo's members, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, had something to prove. Definitive Jux label head El-P, who produced the album, was fired up to define himself post-Company Flow. And underground hip-hop was at the perfect point to accept a new vanguard for post-Wu-Tang spiritual headknock. But bridges have been burned, beefs over business have gone down, and all the players have been left to their own devices. The more time that passes, the easier it is to wonder how well the sum of CanOx's parts could survive independently of each other. For a while after the release of 2008's Dueces Wild, it looked like Vast Aire was finally starting to shift the conversation from "when's the next CanOx album?" to "when's the next Vast album?" But any feeling of momentum from that release has vanished on OX 2010: A Street Odyssey. It takes 35 seconds for the space-age triumphalism of "Nomad" to get to this cornball lyric: "And even though I do yoga/ Trust me, Vast Aire has never been a poseur." Over a beat evoking some sort of futurist celestial majesty, that head-slapper of a punchline is only the first of several moments where it feels like Vast is stuck somewhere between badass and goofball. In splltting the difference, he just sounds stilted. Other verses tread a similar line. "My dad is a Magnum/ I'm a son of a gun," Vast jokes on "2090 (So Grimmy)". The wicked-carnival scenario of "Merry Go Round" has just the minimum amount of dignity to keep it from seeming like a bid for Juggalo crossover fandom. And the goopy wuv-rap of "Horoscope" is way too treacly from someone who once poured his heart out on The Cold Vein's devastatingly sincere "The F-Word". The most cringeworthy moment comes in closer "Battle of the Planets", where Vast actually recycles the refrain from "Scream Phoenix", turning The Cold Vein's most life-affirming moment into a grudge taunt at the expense of former Weathermen crewmate Cage. His deliberate, heavily enunciated growl underlines every embarrassing lyrical decision in red pen....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| I find myself rating a lot of things against Cannibal Ox’s “Iron Galaxy.” Other Cannibal Ox songs, different peanut butter spreads, ex-girlfriends, the weather, you name it: if it can be judged, I’ve probably at some time or another said, “Yeah, but it’s no ‘Iron Galaxy’.” Its six minutes sum up everything great not just about The Cold Vein or Cannibal Ox or even the Def Jux roster at its millennial zenith — “Iron Galaxy” is about the promise of hip-hop as a genre fulfilled. From the abstract stream-of-consciousness street lyrics to El-P’s orbital beat to the sample to the prophesy of a post-9/11 New York to that clip from The Big Chill, this is what hip-hop sounds like at its very best. It’s also lightning in a bottle, and though a lot of people can’t let it go, the three dudes behind The Cold Vein have tried their damnedest to varying degrees of success. Backpack-leaning Vordul Mega and street-savvy Vast Aire split from El-P and each other to pursue their own muses. It’s no surprise these solo pursuits resulted in more extreme versions of their personalities together: El rode his dystopian nightmare through a few solo albums and seems content to continue doing so; Vordul got more socially conscious on Yung World and Megagraphitti in particular; Vast dumped his more intuitive, subtle moments for straight braggadocio in The Weathermen and on Look, Mom… No Hands and Dueces Wild. His exaggerated pronunciations lend themselves well to that sort of thing, but an album full of vacuous (not to mention inaccurate) pronouncements is tiring. If Vast thought that using the Ox name in the title of his latest album on the 10th anniversary of The Cold Vein’s release would trick fans and recapture some of that missing magic, the songs of OX 2010: A Street Odyssey vividly illustrate that Vast can’t do it alone. The sci-fi fascination is still there — opening skit “Intro Ox 9000” is a painfully drawn-out Kubrick cop, several of these beats sound like El-P imitations, “Dark Matter (Feat. Space),” the cover, etc. — but at its heart, this album is still a Vast solo release and no amount of nudging to remember when can change that....full text |
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