As with all of my album reviews, there always needs to be a bit of a back story to the review itself, now, you might say, “Icy efff that, we just want to know if it’s good or not” and I’ll say, “you don’t matter anyway, your illiterate.” to where you’ll reply, “Aiight joe, continue.” LOL! Anyway, one of my friends asked me this week if I felt that Hip-Hop was dead, I said “Definitely, the culture has been gone for some time.”
He said, it is one of the few art forms that has remained virtually unchanged since 1982, the same subject matter, the same boom bap & the fact that they are just talking on beat, now the latter portion came from a friend of mine who felt that hip-hop has been dead for years. There are no more emcees, and he has a Grammy.
I say all of that to say this about The Paxtons as a whole, Chris asked his Twitter followers last week how & who you would use to describe their sound now. For me that is tough, because The Paxtons have evolved to whatever they want at the exact time that they want to sound like. Take a look at their catalog of music Members Only, Work, Manhattan Project all have that feel good hip-hop 1982 flow. You know, 16 bars, hook, 16 bars, wave your hands in the air and smoke something, I love it, and support.
Then there is Avenue A. This is what being a musician & artist is all about. Taking a risk, being a Marcel Duchamp in a time where artist are so far up their own assholes, and he says “efff it, I’m doing my own thing, you bore me to tears, I can’t take loving her anymore she’s fucked every man…even UMC.” Because, Avenue A is a new found animal that refuses to be contained or even defined, it is something grander than I can even express in this form communication.
Avenue A is a breath of fresh air, at a time, where everyone with a laptop, a pair of earbuds, and an internet connection can put together something that resembles what I fell in love with in 1989. Avenue A is inadvertently a musical & avant-garde art fair packaged as a Hip-Hop album.
Sure, it shares, rhyme schemes, cursing, hooks, slang, but, there are moments on this album to where, you are not sure what they are trying to do, or what they are trying to convey, but they throw so much at you in 29mins packed into 7 songs, you will find yourself, going back and listening to it for more. The production is top notch, the mixing is fantastic and the engineering is phenomenal. Most importantly, it’s big on something I am not in this Album Review…brevity.
They, spend no time warming up an intro for 45 seconds before they fall into the same damn 16 hook 16 hook then bridge boring as fuck formula. There are so many odd and amazing ambient sounds on this project. To be honest, this was not what I expected from them, not at all, I was expecting a Phrenology, Electric Circus, Section 80 sound, but what I got was…
Better than I ever imagined. The Paxtons dreamed up an audible treat that is impossible to understand how grand or important it is at this time, I really believe by the time Avenue D is released next year, people will fully understand what Avenue A meant to the band and to a larger group of people.
After 20 full listens through of Avenue A I can honestly say this is the best project I have personally picked up this year. At first listen, I didn't get it, I didn’t understand it, I came back to it a day later, and listened without boundaries. I haven’t felt this good about an album since; How I Got Over, but I would say more realistically, Toxicity. So many styles and it all works together in an amazing weird soundgasm ear drum orgy.
I give this album 5 out of 5. It’s a classic, it’s a classic ahead of its time. It’s a magnificent work of art, it’s not just rap, even though it’s rap, it’s not too avant-garde, but it’s not afraid to flex its knowledge and life experience, it’s a young man who has grown up, moved out, become great, become flawed, yet still is able to find its self at a board meeting discussing philanthropic works and then smoke something. It’s ushering a new style of Hip-Hop, yet it’s doing in the right way.
It’s coming up like our generation that refuses to be over simplified, and pigeonholed. We are all of those negative things you think young people are, but we are so much more. You might look us over once or twice for the tried and true, but we are coming, and we are creating our own lane. We are creating a whole new run of Avenues…look out for us…
The Paxtons Avenue A is a Classic it is 5 out of 5. Period.
http://paxtonavenue.com/ with there lead off single and video.
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