Posted on 08/30/2005

 

There are some artists that will have a dedicated following simply based on their output. People will flock to an artist or group that puts out consistently quality material. Cults dedicated to waiting two or three years for the next installment in the artist's saga to fully digest it and inject it into their everyday life until the next go around. All of this out of the appreciation for a musician caring enough to have high quality control of their music. So when these types of artists slip up and release something not up to their previously established high standard, it makes it all the more disappointing to be one of the members of the dedicated following.

J-Live is the perennial underdog of hip hop. No matter how loud his following screams about his seeming perfection as a creator of hip hop music, and despite heaps of critical acclaim, he simply can't make that break and reach the wider audience he so rightly deserves. For numerous 12" singles and two absolutely stunning full length albums, J-Live has been a voice of solace and a much needed breath of fresh air in modern hip hop and to say that The Hear After was "anticipated" after the absolute gem that was All of the Above would nearly be mocking the word.

Let's just get this out of the way right now: The Hear After is a disappointment. It's just simply not as good as anything he's released previously. The main problem here is the production. Gone are the soulful and organic creations of top name beat creators and present are otherwise unknown producers (that is, when J himself isn't at the helm).

Although things start out on a couple of very high notes ("Here" and "Aaw Yeah"), it soon goes straight to the doldrums. It's not that J has gotten lazy as an MC; on the contrary. In fact, everything he's saying is just as good as anything on his past records. It's just that, with All of the Above, he opened his soul and reached peaks of emotional depth and clarity in his writing with pieces like "Satisfied?," "Nights Like This" and especially "The 4th 3rd." With this album's tough guy persona raps "Do My Thing," "Sidewalks" and "Harder", the entire record feels like one big retreat from those heights.

And while there are some attempts in the middle third of the album to revive things from the redundant lull it places itself into by track four (the trilogy of "Audio Visual," "Brooklyn Public Part One," and "Listening" are just right), there is just too little attention paid to crafting quality beats here. Along with some forced rhymes about being tough, there are some forced attempts at making purposely-different sounding beats. Some tracks are unfortunately scarce ("Harder" and "After"), while others are unnecessarily over produced and glisten to the point of annoyance ("Harder," complete with a totally out of place guitar solo and the ill-advised Dwele collaboration, "Coming Home" just comes off as cheesy).

However, if there is an upside to the lacking beats, it's that you have to put your full attention on J to enjoy the songs. And he is seemingly stuck forever at the top of his lyrical game. While he may have regressed to that simple boom bap shit talking for the majority here, he's still an insightful guy on highlights "Brooklyn Public Part One" (a reflection on his days spent as a school teacher) and "Audio Visual" (his startlingly brilliant attempt to paint an audio picture). Even on the lesser tracks, when forcing himself to be redundant and write about boring subject matter, he can be the most clever and line rewind-earning MC in the game.

Ultimately, this ends up like his 2003 EP, Always Will Be, as a good, but very frustrating record. It's just a sad day for J-Live fans when he releases an album that's more boring than good, but most of all, so unexciting and anti-climatic. Oh well, there's always next time.