Grieves Album Review

Seattle | Ralph Cramden

Hip hop is a very delicate art form in which a mc has the opportunity to cast themselves out to the world as a catalyst of thought and insight as well as entertainment. When it’s done with the sheer unprotected madness that drives a man to grab a mic, it’s untouchable, but when it falls short of representing a greater story then themselves, it feels like an exercise in masturbation. With every synth wash and emo-beat driven prose it seems that Grieves’ Irreversible builds itself in to a claustrophobic space where the inflections, the delivery, and sappy hurt man syndrome all fall into the hip hop land of predictability. Introspective hip hop is like having a friend who is genuine and sincere but sometimes needs to get the back hand a few times just to thrust them from their self absorbed monolog. I’m sure Grieves gets the Atmosphere comparisons more then he cares to admit, which is not a bad comparison at that, but it’s just that there is an overall lack of genuine output here. Grieves, if you want to drop pain come with it naked and ready. Something is lost when one translates their pain and struggle without an attempt to bridge their personal world with that of the listeners. With respect to Grieves his skills as a mc are smooth and he has obviously worked on his cadence enough to be accepted in to the regime, but the over all product is safe and dull. It’s hard to criticize one who claims to “verbalize his blood”, but Grieves has developed his skills in delivering it in diluted sippy cups. If “Lazt Kall” and “Capital Hill Girls” was a way to show Grieves’ humor, it was poor judgment on his part. These oddball tracks have no place in the album and only reinforce my conclusion that Grieves’ connection to the human experience is not represented well on wax. Amazingly Mr. Lif, to me a legend in voice and in opinion, appears on the title track only to overshadow his young Jedi, but even still, Mr. Lifs presence was lacking with a backdrop of milk toast production. All said and done, not bad for a beginners effort but come on, lets step it up to next level shit.