Album Review: Kam Moye – Splitting Image (2009)

Album Review: Kam Moye – Splitting Image (2009)
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Potholes

Kam Moye, formerly known as Supastition, well understands the ins and outs of label shadiness (also known as industry rule #4080), and in traditional Supastition fashion, wastes no time in delving into that issue on 2009’s Splitting Image. As Supastition, label hardships were often the bulk of the content he touched upon. Well, let it be known that this is not a Supastition album. Kam is on a mission to bring about a new beginning (although he already did release the Self-Centered EP under his given name in 2008). It’s not that he’s putting the days of industry woes in his past, he’s just moving onto bigger and brighter things, and finding much more to talk about.

In many senses, Splitting Image is an album for the people – the American everyman. Even as tracks vary from hard-hitting, to smooth and soul-ed out, the lyrical content is never ‘hard’ or overtly confrontational. Kam is more interested in providing a blueprint of sorts, for a life well lived. On “Splitting image” Kam delivers rhymes about his idea of what true happiness is. Phonte and Ayah show up on “Hello Karma”, a track that doesn’t dig terribly deep below the surface, but still puts forth valuable insight to society’s behavior and wrongdoings. Other notable guest verses are supplied from two of Michigan’s finest, Buff1 and One Be Lo, on the tracks “Do What It Takes” and “Life Line”, respectively.

The real gem on this album is the addictive, Veterano-produced “Let’s Be Honest”. Kam wisely centers his album around this track, which reminds people to be humble and thankful for what they already have. It’s tracks like these that put Kam on the level of the listener, allowing him to produce believable music that people can relate to. He makes sure to make it known that he has remained humble with lines like, “There’s still two sides to being Kam Moye. One’s a rapper, the other owes his landlord.”

The production on this album is for the most part solid, however there is more than one occasion where the loops become too repetitive and actually end up detracting from his track. In comparison to previous Kam and Supastition projects, there is much more of a full sound present here; he’s no longer content with banging drum tracks dotted with one singular, wicked instrument riff. This move works at times, and proves to falter other times, as Kam sometimes takes a back seat to the more lavish production. Furthermore, on the tracks where the loop is overly simple and repetitive, it doesn’t help that Kam’s words do not always exhibit the most complex rhyme schemes and patterns. Kam is much more focused on giving positive, admirable content, than tongue-twisting bars.

At just under an hour in length, Splitting Image is certainly not an abnormally long album, but at the same time there is nothing wrong with a 40-45 minute album. There could have been some fat trimmed here, solidifying Splitting Image into a concise, near brilliant artistic realization (perhaps something along the lines of Common – Be). But the facts stand; there is filler here, and therefore Splitting Image is a very, very good album, not amazing.