Blaq Poet – E.B.K.

Blaq Poet – E.B.K.
On The Block Ent.: 2012

In the current internet-centric hip-hop climate, in which any head is free to burrow as deep into any weird niche as their internet connection will allow and even the more street minded, knuckle headed artists are demonstrating an increasing willingness to play with (for want of a better word), “artiness” either aesthetically or sonically, a thoroughly traditionalist, hardcore NY rap record is becoming an increasingly hard sell.

This isn’t universal, of course: Sean Price has against some odds managed to maintain a position as an eminent force simply through sheer force of personality and a funiquely wicked sense of humour to temper his bludgeoning lyricism, while his onetime understudy Rustee Juxx has more than one strong release under his belt and livens up pretty much whatever he appears on mostly due to the unrelenting aggression that he displays, a notch up from most.

But both of those guys have an individual selling point, a vigour that adds an exciting sheen to their knowingly petty violence. Blaq Poet, a Queensbridge old head, doesn’t have the same equipment, just a fat sack of couplets concerning vague threats, explicit threats, and frustration with “fake motherfuckers.”  He has a little presence on the mic when he gets into it, but his flow and particularly his lyricism are workmanlike, never transcending the decades old-established parameters that they fit so snugly into. The furthest he ventures from hard-headed shit talking on his new album E.B.K. is on the token weed song “Let’s Get High” which is about as by the numbers as it sounds.

When the lyricism on a rap record is so flat, it pretty much falls to the beats to do the heavy lifting, and here as well the album slips. Poet has worked with DJ Premier in the past, but here relies largely on militaristic aggro-rap bombast, all swooping strings and straight ahead snare hits reminiscent of crews like Jedi Mind Tricks that over the course of 45 minutes start to feel grindingly monotone. There are flashes of greater things: the stuttering “No Joke” is a slight change of pace, while the funkier “Fuck You” provides a back drop that’s actually kind of fun, over which Blaq spits some of the records most likeable bars. These are largely the exceptions though; overall the tracks sonically kind of just bleed into one.

Admittedly, it does feel a little off to criticize a record that ultimately has probably done the job it set out to do. Blaq isn’t a bad rapper or anything, it’s just that the record feels jarringly out of step with what is going on in hip-hop right now, and not in a way that feels at all refreshing like the Memphis worship of the Raider Klan or even the boom-bap revivalism of Joey Bada$$. It feels weird to hear Poet saying he will chase you “from Twitter to Myspace”, or throwing shots at Jay-Z, Kanye, Lil Wayne, Eminem and even Soulja Boy on the album’s title track as if it’s something that people might find exciting to hear. Maybe the dude is a product of his time; he has after all been in this game since the early ’90s. But then again, so has Sean Price, and the prospect of Mic Tyson dropping soon feels a hell of a lot more urgent than any feelings that E.B.K. can muster up.

2 out of 5