Search - Jel :: Soft Money

Great album

Exxxxx | shack in the wilderness. | 03/24/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I wrote Anticon and their roster off as a bunch of pretentious nerd rappers years ago based off a few brief listenings to some of their weirder acts. That is up until recently when I finally gave one of their artists (Odd Nosdam) a shot and really enjoyed what I heard. I was told by a friend who's big on Anticon that Jel and Telephone Jim Jesus would be worth my time to check out next. I wasn't too crazy about TJJ, but after listening to a few Jel tracks on last.fm I was sold and ran out and picked up Soft Money that same day. So anyways I've been listening to this album regularly for a couple of weeks now and I love it. It's mostly instrumentals which is cool for me because I love instrumental hip hop, but this record really stands out and isn't your typical instro album. One thing about it that's cool is how Jel incorporates live instrumentation with his loops and samples, and it works amazingly well how he does it. There's really no repetition like you'll find with a lot of instrumental rap records, he does a good job of keeping the loops brief and constantly changing & evolving, so even the songs with no vocals will keep you interested in what's going on with the tracks. There's a couple of songs with Jel and some other dude rapping and they're okay, he doesn't have a great voice for rapping and his cadence is kinda dry, but the lyrics are really good. The real standouts on this album are the instrumental tracks, specifically No Solution, Thrashin, Know You Don't, Nice Last & Chipmunk Technique. I'd actually rate this at just over 4 and a half stars, but will go ahead & give it 5 because the overall rating before this review is too low for how good this actually is (IMO of course). Highly recommend this one to open minded hip hop fans, there's alot to love with this album and not many negatives to speak of."