Nothing makes us not look forward to an album like when the main artist themselves talk extensive shit about it – can you blame us? Their heart clearly wasn’t in it. Often it comes down to the fact that the artist made poor creative decisions for the sake of money, like Cassidy did when he made this. A lack of fucks was also given by the Wu-Tang Clan recently when they forced the highly anticipated A Better Tomorrow.
DMX is the latest artist to drop an album that they don’t stand behind, seemingly because they didn’t read the fine print. Although he claims the music is stolen, we were recently blessed with the album Redemption Of The Beast – an album that we can describe as a few ok joints sprinkled into a bunch of filler.
Overall it’s a collection of songs that would/should have stayed on a cutting room floor.
Though the label, who adamantly claimed they purchased these songs fair and square, states the album is produced by the best in the industry, but it doesn’t come across. Many of the album’s songs seem uninspired, dated and overall just very meh. There are some moments of clarity; Solid featuring Rampage has some knock to it and 56 Bars produced by Swizz Beats is pretty much the hottest joint here, and it’s old lyrics. A pleasant surprise was Where You Been featuring Freeway, which we enjoyed (even though the hook was kind of cornball).
We were super amped to hear the Dame Grease produced Gonna Get Mine, but were disappointed by slightly sonic quality, which sounds like a weird thing to say about a commercially released song. It sounds unmixed and raw. X had bars though.
Overall it’s a collection of songs that would/should have stayed on a cutting room floor. Please reader, take our hostility with a grain of salt – because we love DMX. We grew up bumping him, and have always remained a fans. We just hold him to a high standard, and this did not live up to that. We’re happy to hear that DMX seems to feel the same way about this album, and is working with Swizz Beats to release an album that is actually dope!
