Album Review: Kev Brown – Random Joints (2009)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Potholes

The latest installment in the discography of esteemed DMV area producer, Kev Brown, comes in the form of a modest package of nine crafty beats, namely Random Joints. Kev kicks it off with a movie-like opening, “Listen…” as if introducing something long awaited, or something that had been in the works for quite some time. This may actually be very close to the truth. After his 2005 release I Do What I Do, Kev went to work producing outstanding tracks for an insanely wide range of rappers and singers, many, fittingly from his very own DMV area. With all of his production for others, it’s fair and understandable that he hadn’t had much time to delve into solo projects.

Enter: Random Joints, the slapped-together EP of, well, random joints that Kev has produced along the way. Yet, somehow it all works – to an extent. Basic boom-bap on “The Random Joint” gives way to more quirky production, sending off many tracks with a seemingly random short outro, as if it was picked out of a grab bag. Hitting the halfway point, “The Alternative Rock Joint” is just what it sounds like: a hip-hop beat laced with an alternative rock sample that trudges along, complete with an absurdly sleek guitar track.

Next comes the jazz, perhaps the one element where Kev Brown finds himself most comfortable – and it shows. The two standout tracks, “The Marvelous Joint” and “The Hennessy Joint”, each play with mellow jazz samples over drum loops that are simple enough to back the crackling vinyl production, yet strong enough to push the track forward. Each of these tracks also features Kev Brown’s good friends Yu and Kenn Starr, respectively, who each leave very solid verses.

As a production album, Kev was smart to limit this to just 9 tracks, because any more tracks would have greatly exposed this as a haphazardly assembled assortment of beats that don’t have much connection from one track to the next. But for those who can tolerate a bit of attention deficit with their beats, Random Joints is a sure-fire winner, with more pros than cons, and quite a few head-nodders.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 at 5:23 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.