Jeff Gerstmann

Without turning a release review into a treatise on the artist, I'll just say that I think Pusha T has an incredible voice, flows extremely well, and knows his lane. He's the undisputed king of modern coke raps and modern Arby's raps. In his (admittedly, pretty specific) lanes, no one is better. Nothing gets me going quite like Pusha T's best material and I will always seek out anything he releases to give it a shot. All that said...

My Name Is My Name contains some of Pusha T's finest work, but it's ultimately a fairly uneven record with a few too many skippable tracks to be fully recommendable. Even with that in mind, Nosetalgia, Numbers on the Boards, and… More

Bill Drummond is a lot of things... a great rapper is not one of them. But he gets his points across effectively and skillfully enough for this to still work on some level. I guess I'd call this more of an interesting record than a good one, because there's something compelling about the idea of a hip-hop record coming out of the UK in 1987 even before you get to the legacy and lore of The JAMs. Not a terrible listen--the audacity of the sampling still stands out--but I have to imagine that it probably hits a little harder now if you were there when it came out.

While the mere idea of these guys continuing the group after leader Richie Rich went away for awhile on possession charges is cold, if not despicable... this album is a straight-up Oakland classic, as far as I'm concerned. D-Loc shows some solid growth here as an artist, effectively stepping into the spotlight and becoming the lead voice. While The Young Brotha Broski is not an amazing rapper, he holds his own well enough.

Might be easy for some to write off as "just another hip-hop record sampling NWA after Straight Outta Compton came out," but I love it.

As far as I'm concerned, this tape started the whole "let's sample some super hero book-on-tape-type records" thing before MF DOOM could. Not that that's the end-all, be-all marker of a great record or anything, but I think if you like any of that other stuff (and you love breaks), this thing might still blow you away.

QBert (and guests) put together an amazing mix here. This sent me down the path of listening to the Skratch Piklz, but none of the stuff they released as a group ever did it for me the way this one still does. Even just the Tom Sawyer routine that opens the mix--an idea that a lot of lesser DJs would "borrow" in the… More

Not to overthink it, but there's a real advancement and evolution of production techniques happening here that are straight-up fascinating when compared to JPEGMAFIA's earlier output. This sounds hard in a different way, toning down a little bit of the wilder production found on, say, Scaring the Hoes, in favor of something that takes on more of a heavy-metal-like style, complete with some absolutely killer guitar parts. Or are they "guitar parts?" It doesn't matter. Either way it'd be fun to see JPEGMAFIA team up and tour with a full band for some of this stuff.

Sonically, the way Peggy's vocals play around with quiet/loud and calm/yell-type stuff fits really well with this current batch of material. Lyrically,… More