Send "Paul White " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 In case the album title's got you thinking otherwise: Paul White is not a rapper. He's a producer from London, a designation that, these days, might bring to mind dubstep and UK bass-- but despite some enthusiastic co-signs from publications that orbit around that scene, White ain't part of it. He works in sticky, abstracted hip-hop rhythms coated in THC resin; 2009's The Strange Dreams of Paul White, one of his earlier full-lengths (all of which can be heard on his Bandcamp page) found Captain Beefheart bumping up against weirded-out boom-bap.Those previous releases felt homemade and somewhat amateurish, a distinction which makes Rapping With Paul White a bit of a coming-out party: there's equal parts mutant funk and dusty beats here, but it sounds like White's first true statement of purpose, his own preferred introduction to new listeners. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also his first LP that largely features guest vocals (this is where the Rapping comes in); White's gathered names both recognizable (Danny Brown, Homeboy Sandman, frequent past collaborator Guilty Simpson) and not-so-recognizable (Marv Won, Moe Pope, Tranqill). So this is a record that depends as much on what the spitters bring to the table as what White cooks up in the lab-- and, unfortunately, the rappers don't exactly come correct. Considering how he and White have a past history of collaborating, you'd think that Guilty Simpson and White would be firing on all cylinders by now; instead, the Detroit hardhead unfurls cliché after cliché and drops vague, autobiographical teases that don't reveal much in particular. (Though he gets points for the "murdering mic's like Conrad Murray" line in "Dirty Slang".) His performances are uninspiring enough to think that of last year's full-length collab with Madlib, the cleverly titled OJ Simpson, relied solely on 'Lib's beatcraft....full text |
| Popmatters |
| For the past couple of years, Paul White has been building a steady brand through instrumental hip-hop releases, most notably through his excursion of psychedelic rock samples, Paul White and the Purple Brain for Now-Again Records. His sound is very similar to Madlib’s, which is no small praise. He doesn’t have any production totems, preferring to browse through all of his music collection and figure out how to make beats from anything, whether it be rock, soul, reggae, classical or found sounds. However, the true test of a hip-hop producer will never be the beat tape, if only because the genre of hip-hop instrumentals applies to a very select group of the community. Rapping With Paul White comes at a very appropriate time in White’s career, then, as his productions have begun to pop up on various artists’ LPs from Detroit to London. Unfortunately, Rapping With Paul White suffers from the same sort of problems plenty of Madlib’s rap-oriented releases have been held back by. While it’s an undeniably entertaining listen, there are no homerun hits here and plenty of tracks, particularly the instrumentals, lack cohesion. The first segment of the album is pulled off cleanly, perhaps because of its laser-like focus on the psychedelic side of White’s oeuvre matched with a trio of gritty Detroit MCs - Guilty Simpson, Marv Won and Danny Brown. However, as the album rolls along, it begins to feel a bit unfocused and showy, blazing through interview and television samples paired up with African tribal beats, soul samples and spotty rapping that doesn’t really add much to the note-perfect production. A great example of this is “A Weird Day”, where former MTV Made coach Homeboy Sandman details a day spent wandering the streets of the UK. The chorus of “UK? OK!” is frustratingly dull, even grating, and neither the beat nor the rapper come with the sort of energy that blesses earlier tracks like “The Doldrums” or “One of Life’s Pleasures.” Guilty Simpson appears to be in steady B-list mode on “Trust”, providing his gully vocals without the staggeringly simple yet effective rhymes that made albums like Ode to the Ghetto and Random Axe so subtly arresting. Other rappers like Moe Pope of the San Francisco Bay area and Tranqill out of London just feel like guys who would make a bigger mark on a full-length dedicated to their performances. Moe Pope in particular brings to mind Mos Def circa the late ‘90s in some respects, but in the context of this release feels a little like a token conscious rapper. It’s really only Danny Brown who does a strong job of grabbing your ears and not letting go, though there’s something hypnotic about “Indigo Glow”‘s incense-infused vibe combined with Jehst’s whispery cadence....full text |
| Residentadvisor |
| Paul White is a South London based hip-hop producer who easily could have been cast aside in a world full of press releases that abuse the phrase "post-Dilla." But rather than just pairing blunted beats and cracking, off-kilter snares, he's steadily amassed a growing fan base by injecting a psychedelic, disjointed and quite often humourous take on the genre. Previous work has seen him plundering prog and psych for his dense productions. Rapping with Paul White is him trying something completely different. The album takes seven mostly unknown MCs and inserts them into White's strange dreams. The results are dazzling. There's calming, meditative moods on instrumental opener "Right On," and the poetic closer "Wily Walruses." Stark, ethereal and paranoid moments come from Jehst's "Indigo Glow" and the somewhat underwhelming lead single "Trust" featuring Guilty Simpson. There's also some pretty filthy stuff, said in ways we're not familiar with: Danny Brown's original flow on "One of Life's Pleasures" is an orgiastic feast of flesh, drugs and arrogance over a beat that goes from classic American Rock to mad-minute video game music. Similarly, Moe Pope's wonderfully titled "Stampeding Elephants" sees White taking on a boisterous Afrobeat motif while Pope compares standing out in a crowded rap market to the hierarchy of the jungle. Homeboy Sandman takes on the idiosyncrasies of British culture from the perspective of an outsider American. The album's strongest moment comes from Tranqill, who, over a pitched-up power rock ballad and the most exciting use of a sustained feeding-back guitar chord since Ghostface Killah's "We Celebrate," absolutely dominates the mic, menacing sub-standard MCs with such conviction it sounds like he might jump out of the speakers and have a stern word for you too....full text |
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