Album of the Day: Edan - Primitive Plus

Now THIS is how you work a turntable. It's a true one-man hip-hop album: he provides his own beats and works the mic like a pro. If this were released just as the instrumentals or a cappellas, it would still arguably be better than the majority of albums in my collection. Full of old-school hip-hop beats, jazz samples, and rhymes that are ridiculously on point (think Eyedea mixed with Blueprint, yet somehow different), this is exactly the type of album you should take a listen to if you want to experience fundamentals worked to perfection. This could easily have been produced in 2009 or 1989, it would have fit in either era. This is mind-bogglingly awesome. It's sort of like watching a Falcons game over the last couple of years: everything is fundamentally sound, and more or less the way the game is supposed to be played, and that's what is most impressive, not the flashiness or any kind of style points. Every aspect, (nearly) every song is solid, but none are heads-above fantastic (except for perhaps the title track, that one is just a fantastic display of lyrical ability). That is honestly the only criticism I can muster here. The only song that I didn't really like was 'Run That Shit,' which was relatively crude and felt totally out of place with the rest of the album. The title track made me pause the CD and catch my breath, it was that good. Edan, to me, is easily on the level of Peanut Butter Wolf and Madlib when it comes to instrumentals, but is a better rhymer than either, which makes it that much more impressive.