Album Review: Muneshine – Status Symbol (2009)

Album Review: Muneshine – Status Symbol (2009)
Rating: 4 out of 5 Potholes

For those in the know, Canada has exported us with some dope hip-hop talent.  Kardinal Offishall, Shad, and Classified are those who quickly come to mind.  Muneshine is another: a hip-hop producer out of Canada, he has experienced working with a notable name to all our ears, which came in the form of Pete Rock.  On his sophomore effort Status Symbol, he takes to the forefront with the rapping ability, and leaving the production in some rather notable hands.

You’d expect with Status Symbol having an array of different producers doing no more than one or two beats, that the album would lack consistency.  But on the contrary: the beats here are nothing short of the work Muneshine provided on his instrumental effort A Walk In The Park. The beats are courtesy of several different individuals, and most of them do stick out in a great way.  Oddisee’s beat on “Leaving You” has a UFO-like organ with a nice boom-bap drum while Muneshine rides on with his flow, while Illmind provides a banger of a backdrop on “Mark My Words”, and comes back for round 2 on the rather subdued and eerily skillful sounding, “It’s Mine”, which enlists Skyzoo, Little Vic, Emilio Rojas, Kenn Star and D-Sisive.  However it is M-Phazes who provides the albums star cuts, such as the collab on “What Now” featuring Sean Price & Termanology, the spacey sounding “Globetrotters”, and on “Foreign Affairs”, which enlists the assistance of Nature, who drops a mind-blowing verse that makes you wonder where he’s been.

However there is one thing that makes you wish Muneshine pulled double duty on this album, and it comes in the form of the soulful and upbeat tone on “Love You More”, which shows that he is more than capable of pulling it off.  The drum is rapid, the sample is soulful, and Muneshine provides a definite banger with a very heartfelt tone.  That’s not to knock his rapping ability either, because across the board on this release, he does a wonderful job of making sure he can hang with the big dogs.  It comes in the form of his internal rhyming and vivid description on pretty much every track.

When we talk about the producer/rapper double threat, we think of standards: Kanye West, Alchemist, DJ Quik, Medium Zach of Big Quarters.  Certainly the list may go on and on, but there are a lot that can be excluded from the equation.  Muneshine, after displaying his skill time and time again, has proven that Status Symbol includes him in these ranks of a producer/rapper double threat.