Album Review: Hilltop Hoods - State of the Art (2009)

Rating: 3 out of 5 Potholes

Hearing Hilltop Hoods, you come across a ton of unknowns regarding this group.  For starters, they’re from South Australia.  In Australia, they’ve been holding down the Hip-Hop scene there since 1991.  They’ve put out four studio albums, two live DVD’s and have achieved massive success in their homeland.  Now the group puts out its fifth studio effort titled State of the Art, which is another nice addition to the group’s extensive catalog.

Suffa, Pressure and DJDebris come across like Eminem if he had a down under accent with an M.O.P like energy, and its inherent on the triumphant sound of “The Return”.  The similar tone is echoed on “Super Official”, and the dancehall tinged elements on “Still Standing”,  however they echo a storytelling tone on “Chase That Feeling”.  There’s also the hilariously told “She’s So Ugly”, and Pharoahe Monch joins in on the fun on “Classic Example”.  There’s also a humorous undertone brimming on “Chris Farley” with a more serious undertone on “Last Confession”.

On the production side of things, the songs mentioned above rely on light usage of samples and heavy uses of instrumentation.  There are times where the tracks above take a Pete Rock-esque turn, where the horns blare along with the original instrumentation, there are other times where the keys and the bashing, yet crisp drums provide a burbling underbelly provided with the lyrics from Suffa and Pressure.  Add to that element DJ Debris scratching in clever iconic tunes from Hip-Hop’s days of yore (GZA’s line from “Clan In Da Front” by the Wu-Tang Clan can be detected on “The Return”).

Overall, State of the Art is nothing fancy; it’s not necessarily the best or the worst record produced by our further east neighbors.  State of the Art if anything else continues their legacy of being a good rap group coming out of Australia. And the fact that they don’t necessarily have a tarnished legacy of any sort makes the Hilltop Hoods a continuing inspiration not just to the homies in south Australia, but for the Hip-Hop heads around the spectrum.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 10:50 am and is filed under Album Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.