REVIEWS
AWOL One & Daddy Kev
Souldoubt
(Mean Street)
Daddy Kev is a rising star in the world of hip-hop production with fresh
beats with an impressive resume of artists he's done beats for:
Busdriver, Dose One, Mikah 9, Sole, and others. He's definitely out
there in that land of "advanced" hip-hop providing a soundscape for
abstract and experimental rappers to flow over. Awol One is the latest
such rapper to step up and get a piece of his production, and their
collabo' resulted in the impressive Souldoubt.
Vocally, Awol One is a little reminiscent of R.A. the Rugged Man. You
get the feeling from listening to his voice that he smokes blunts and
drinks whiskey all day. On the other hand, Awol couldn't have any LESS
in common with R.A.'s style -- a shock theatre of "hairy fat unshaven"
whiteness. Awol One is more interested in exploring the depths of his
own psyche and the power of words to describe his world. "Music is the
weapon of the future" for Awol on the song "Demolition":
"No destination of where I'm headed to/No imagination but now I'ma get
it through/Just a touch of the world's blue hands/Take me to the other
place, never leavin a trace/Invitin me, leaves me an ugly aftertaste/Once
I got third place in the human race/I wish doctors knew how to heal/Cause
like Gargamel, I'm chillin with Azrael."
Of course, there are plenty of rappers in hip-hop today who are trying
to be introspective or profound -- and not all of it makes for an
entertaining listening experience. As Awol One says on "Content" though,
"Some people, they just play the part/But people like us devote our
life to the art." And Awol's devotion is obvious. In fact to some, it
might be a little too serious. This is not light music, or happy music,
but it is definitely artful. And with Daddy Kev's beats and scratching
assistance by D-Styles of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, it's mostly good.
With the keys and melodies of the darkly beautiful "Revolution" and the
fast and spaced out sound of "Worship" you may at times feel as though
you're listening to a Del album by Dan the Automator or a Kool Keith
album by Kut Masta Kurt. This album's sound and style is closely kin to
both, and not in any way displeasing -- even if Awol's painful
soul-searching occasionally gets brutal on songs like "Solitude":
"I walk around my house in my bare feet in dead silence, and listen to
the stairs squeak/Bumpin around, the lights off, in the dark In my
silverware drawer, I'm feelin knives and forks (ahh yeah this'll work) I
get the sharpest utensil I can find or maybe it's the pencil I'll
grind/Lead poisoning in my mouth but anything I find is to cut my tongue out/So
I can stop all the stupid things I say/A mutant can probably change
my wicked ways."
This album's only mistake might be the monotonous opening track
"Ignorance" -- a repeating dirty bassline which has Awol using a
sing-song flow that quickly gets on your nerves. Most people who put
this album in their discman might think Awol was overrated and
uninteresting if they never got past this song to track two. If you have
a chance to preview it, don't make this mistake. From the funky
xylophonic and flute jazz of "Rhythm" to the dark heavy beats and lyrics
of "Agony", the cuts shine throughout. Awol may not be everyone's cup of
tea, but for people who like original beats and a left of center topic
matter that's not about drinking Cristal or driving a Bentley, Awol and
Daddy Kev got your shit right here. -- RapReviews.com
Being a huge Celestial fan already, I thought that I'd be into this
album -- which is why I didn't mind spending the $12 on it blindly. I
really liked Awol's "I Guess?" single a while back and thought there'd
be at least a couple of dope tracks here. Well, how wrong can you get?
The album is comprised of 11 dope tracks!
Kicking off with "Ignorance," Awol gets dark and evil over one of Daddy
Kev's darker audio projects -- very sinister basslines and thumping
drums, while Awol bursts out imperitives almost army-general style. It
sounds like he could even be freestyling, but you don't care, because he
explains that he's a "borderline genius or a mad man, deaf dumb and
blind but I do what I can." "Rhythm" has a great piccolo-styled hook
running throughout and the crescendo at the end of each few bars sounds
amazing - a really visual soundscape that conjures up detective-story
imagery and other madness. Awol tells you all that 'music is the weapon
of the future' on "Demolition" and tells you that "once I got third
place in the human race," as Daddy Kev gives you a musical programme of
mad echos, funky bass and other noises. D-Styles contributes some nice
scratching on "Agony," and Awol lets you all know what he doesn't want
("I don't people to worship the almighty dollar") in life. "Solitude" is
some next ish -- almost Tony Da Skitzo-sounding -- really evil and weird,
as Awol tells you about cutting his tongue out with scissors ("End up a
babbling idiot with my lips sown up... haven't found a way to kill me
yet"). Can't front on any of this album at all, as it pushes the quirky,
spacey and dark styles adopted by people such as Doctor Dooom or Phoenix
Orion to the next level. Even if the subject matter throws you at
points, the lovely production is so rich that you'll still be able to
get with it.
For any fans of Celestial's music or darker sounds (especially those
that enjoy music that is very cinematic and visual), this album is
essential. I love it -- and it's playing non-stop on my headphones at the
time of writing... 'nuff said. -- Spine Magazine
The Shapeshifters are like Hip-Hop aliens, born and bred amidst the smog
and clutter of L.A. yet honed and seemingly cultivated by the rap
version of Oscar The Grouch, AWOL One. Synonyms with multiple generation
dubs that are as gruff and fuzzy as his ever-unique vocals, Awol
personifies the L.A. underground like no other. Like the first time you
heard old Ras Kass in a clear crisp bump, his latest, Souldoubt lays
Awolrus over his cleanest bed of beats (provided by another Los Angeles
standout, Daddy Kev) to date.
What makes this release so special is that even after all the cleaning
up and primping out (assisted by ISP's D-Styles), Awol remains the same
Awol, just more audible and with a vastly improved bump. A track like
"Rhythm" will pleasantly surprise longtime followers as well as draw in
countless new fans, as the incorporation of club-friendly aesthetics and
Blowdian-bred stylings make for an infectious marriage other crossover
acts have failed repeatedly at (again, see Ras Kass). The bumps
successfully continue with brash appeal on tracks like "Agony", a
headbanger of once again surprisingly results. The murky "Revolution"
rolls subtlety with a softly crooning Awol modestly claiming "I make
beautiful things fight each other, I make pretty things get ugly". With
an end result leading the listener to some simultaneous
rewind/volume-pump action. Which could be said for throughout Souldoubt;
Awol One and Daddy Kev collectively churn-out an album full of crisp,
loveable music with unequivocally substantial rhymes happily meandering
in all directions.
Souldoubt will open the closed heads of the past and bring them together
with the faithful followers of the duration. Awol's catalog is thick and
sometimes difficult, this introduction will hopefully lead you on a
journey to seek his often overlooked and misunderstood classics. From
terribly sound quality to club-friendly bumps, the all encompassing
Awolrus awaits you. -- Peter Agoston, HipHopSite.com
So much mental, your head might explode. One of the deepest, most
beautifully arranged hip-hop albums in recent years. -- ADD Reviews
2001: an incredible year for hiphop. So far it has been; Pip Skid, John
Smith, Cannibal Ox, Your Brother in My Backpack, Netherworlds, Scarub,
Epic, Buck 65, Josh Martinez. Each has released an incredible album for
consumption by this lowly peasant, and Awol One and Daddy Kev are the
latest additions to this list. The obscure styles of these two meld
into one beautiful album known as Souldoubt. Awol One, from
Shapeshifters fame, preaches over the crafty beats of Celestial
Squadron producer Daddy Kev -- and joining them on the tables is D-Styles
and DJ ESP. Collaborations in hip-hop are beautiful.
Awol One doesn't MC; he speaks, and most importantly he speaks to me.
Awol's delivery is raspy and cold -- his voice is dreary. There is no
real coherency to a lot of the album; Awol speaks in 1-2-line phrases
of pure genius. Everything is said in nothing. "Revolution" is as
follows. "Don't be the leader of my fan club at the Walrus One
convention/Appreciate 2 o'clock and all of its lessons/She wants to meet
a man and squeeze out his kids/but downing Colt 45s that's all he ever
did... he'll amount to nothing." Quick phrases give advice on how to
think, how to live, and how to be, but don't follow any sort of pattern
or convention. Awol One represents hip-hop by reading life's underlined
passages he says only what's important and ignores the rest. Some MCs
are great storytellers with their skill being in the craft of creating
the story; Awol One is a preacher offering lines of insight, with no
pattern.
Daddy Kev's production is repetitive and hypnotic. His beats have
incredible drums but use a fairly basic sample set up -- the loops are
repetitive but have a number of accents on them. Accents make Daddy
Kev's beats special. The beats sound somewhat repetitive and boring on
first listen, fits perfectly with Awol's lyricism; accents are placed
with Awol's emphasis and makes the beats a delightful listen the 4th or
5th time through the album. Awol and Daddy Kev have infinite chemistry,
the question is, were the beats or lyrics made first? Daddy Kev's best
work is shown on "Content." The incredibly complex drum loop changes
consistently, making the beat a delight for a drum fan like myself.
Added to the loop, Daddy Kev uses hollow samples giving the ambience of
space. Even though the chorus states "Nobody's perfect," Kev reaches
near perfection on this beat.
The strength of the album is consistency. Though your CD player will
tell you the album is over 70 minutes, it's more like 45 minutes of
music. 11 tracks, all with a single name for the title, leave little
room for error. Another beautiful feature to Souldoubt is the lack of
guest MCs. This is Daddy Kev and Awol One, not the Shapeshifters, not
the rest of Celestial Squadron, not the rest of the Skratch Piklz, its
2 musicians making dope music.
Souldoubt is dreary hip-hop from two of LA's greatest talents. Awol One
has little positive to say, but his words are truths examining life,
rather than telling you how many times fresher he is. Daddy Kev's beats
are much the same -- dark, repetitive production that sets the
atmosphere for apocalypse more than your regular club atmosphere.
"Rhythm," Souldoubt's best track can tell you more about these
characters than any review could, so, as Awol states, "Please listen to
my demolition." The pun on the classic EPMD "Please Listen to my
Demos" tells you all you need to know this isn't hiphop, its dark
truth. -- Underground Sound
Beauty lies in simpiclity, but only if it's done correctly. That's
something a lot of hip-hop producers and lyricists have yet to learn.
It seems like the producers that go for simplicity end up producing
tracks that sound like the ones Jay-Z rhymes over: simple, but
pointless. Daddy Kev has gone beyond that and found a way to lay down a
dope track that isn't complicated but sure as anything will get your
head nodding.
Likewise for emcees: writing simple lyrics that conform to a formula of
some sort is easy. Just ask anyone who claims to be from the "dirty
south." But then you have writers like Awol One (of the Mass Men and the
Shapeshifters crew out of California). His style is monotone and
consistent, but he can rightfully claim the title of poet.
You need go no further than the first two tracks of Awol One and Daddy
Kev's debut album on Mean Street Records, Souldoubt, to see how simple
can be beautiful. Even downright gorgeous.
The album's opening track, "Ignorance," is a masterpiece that is just
asking to made into a video, just for the pure cinematic quality of the
production. Awol One's style rides right alongside the melody of the
main sample and allows drum hits to perfectly punctuate his lyrics. And
just as the listener is done vibing to the super-ill opener, in comes
"Rhythm." Maybe I'm just a sucker for vibraphones (Bags would be proud).
Or maybe it's the amazing flutes and cinematic basslines. I don't know
what it is, but "Rhythm" is beyond off-the-hook -- it's disconnected with
no call forwarding. It takes a full 40 seconds before the lyrics come in
(something rare for hip-hop tracks these days), which just goes to show
how the production here can stand on its own. But, once again, Awol One
creates ill verses as well as appropriate hooks: "All these people, just
wanna have fun/All these suckers is so f'ing temporary/Me and my
crew walking down the street/You can't beat the beat, the beat, the
beat..." Damn skippy you can't.
While the remainder of the disc doesn't live up to the momentum the
first two tracks set, they more than make up for it in intellectual
appeal and thematic construction. Moving through one-word titles and
themes like "Agony," "Greed," and "Devotion," Awol One and Daddy Kev
serve up 2001's first must-have hip-hop classic-in-the-making.
"Greed" is especially lyrically poignant: "Money changes humans, / The
ATMs spit out blood" while "Revolution" is the album's abstract track:
"I get drunk and make beautiful things fight each other."
It also doesn't hurt to have D-Styles from the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
adding the turntablist elements, either.
While Souldoubt may not be for everyone, those that are ready for
hip-hop that'll make you think will welcome this album with open arms.
With the amount of music I get and listen to, it's very rare that I give
an album multiple spins in the span of a week, but Souldoubt manages to
keep finding its way into my CD player. -- UA Journal
The California underground has long been a breeding ground for
forward-thinking hip-hop. Along with the late Celestial Records,
Meanstreet Records has been home to many of the more prominent
underground artists, such influential heads as Aceyalone, Grouch, and
Mystik Journeymen. I picked up Souldoubt, a recent Meanstreet
collaboration from Daddy Kev and AWOL One, on a whim, due to the
strength of previous Daddy Kev production work that had spent some
quality time bombing my headphones. It didn't hurt that I knew AWOL One
was a member of the legendary Shapeshifters crew, either.
Souldoubt surprised me seconds into the first song. The beats on the
first track, "Ignorance," were quite recognizably Daddy Kev, with a deep
thudding bass line and a mechanical droning sound that had my head
nodding immediately, but the part that really shook me was the vocals.
What was this talking I was hearing? Some kind of an intro? Turns out
it's just the way AWOL One rocks the mic- he simply talks, in mostly two
line couplets, sounding completely different from the wordy
tongue-twisting and abstract allusions I'd become so used to from the
typical Cali "undie" mc's. The chorus to "Ignorance," spoken in complete
monotone deadpan, consists of "I wish I was a baby/With a fresh mind/And
a brand new brain/No room to rewind/I'm a borderline genius or a
madman/I'm deaf dumb and blind/But I do what I can." Huh.
I gotta admit, I wasn't exactly loving it after the first listen, and I
found myself wondering if AWOL One really belonged on the microphone. I
listened into the second song to see what would happen, and once again
the beat started things off nicely, this time with an old-skool sounding
kick drum and a nicely looped flute. AWOL One, although speeding up his
flow a little bit, sounds much like he does on the first track- not
really rhyming except the last words on the end of the occasional
sentence, not really attempting anything complex verbally, not really
giving any kind of a coherent narrative, just talking about whatever
seemed to be crossing his mind at the time. It was, at the time, less
than captivating. I listened to the rest of the album, wished it was
instrumental, and put it away, not to be touched for almost three
months.
And then, one gloomy day, I found myself about to walk out the door to
take a six hour roadtrip without any music other than the same stuff I'd
been listening to on a daily basis. I usually make a point to buy a new
cd or two before I hit the road, but didn't have time or funds to go get
anything, and so Plan B was to grab some stuff I already had but never
really listened to. Souldoubt certainly fit this profile, and I threw
it into my car and hit the road. Four hours later, immediately after
listening to the dense and abstract Lucy Ford EP's from fellow Cali
hip-hoppers Atmosphere, I decided to give Souldoubt a second chance at
life in my stereo. Maybe it helped that I played it after the highly
conceptual Atmosphere album, or maybe I was just in a different overall
state of mind, but this time around Souldoubt had my attention long
after the AWOL One vocals had appeared. I paid more attention to what
AWOL One was saying and less to how he sounded, and in doing so, came to
appreciate the album for what it was: an straightforward and intelligent
hip-hop album without any hyper-intellectual facades.
Souldoubt keeps it simple all around. The beats never approach the
multi-layered density becoming increasingly prevalent in underground
hip-hop, but they sound absolutely perfect when combined with the
unconventional vocals. AWOL One lays it all out in front of you, in his
easy-to-understand speaking/chanting/rapping lyrics and husky voice. The
content of his vocals match his delivery, as he insightfully addresses
concepts like human nature, what he wants and doesn't want, and science
and religion. He has a penchant for being blunt, wondering aloud "If
we were the chosen ones/Then why do humans have to die?" on "Worship"
and candidly admitting "I get drunk/And make beautiful things fight
each other/I get drunk/And make pretty things get ugly" on
"Revolution." All of which is not to say that he is beyond the use of
the occasional metaphor or symbolic phrase, but even those are easy to
understand when he does use them, and it makes his message more
effective than a rambling stream-of-consciousness type delivery you're
likely to hear from some of his peers. AWOL One has a lot to say and he
wants to be sure you understand it, and more importantly, relate to it-
which is something of a refreshing change of pace for hip-hop that
delves into deeper content than "it's getting hot in here / so take off
all your clothes."
If you're looking for gritty chaotic beats and verbal gymnastics,
Souldoubt is probably not the best thing to throw into your stereo. If
you're looking for a simple and unique piece of hip-hop that doesn't
sacrifice quality of content, check it out. Or, maybe it would be better
to say that you should listen to it if you relate to any of these
sentiments: "I don't want the television to make up my mind/And I
don't want you to tell me what to do/And I don't want kids getting
pregnant at fifteen/And I don't want you to keep stealing my shit... I
don't want a radio without fresh batteries/And all the other radios
they try to battle me/But I throw on my Pumas, and then I'm fine/No
radio gets louder than mine!" Word. -- Stylus Magazine
Fat, sonic beats wrapped around clever lyrics, Awol One & Daddy Kev
deliver rap that is perfect for blasting at parties, dancing too, or
cruising down the road at top speed with the CD roaring. Sharp tongues
arranged over heavy hitting, intoxicating, repetitive beats that grow a
bit tiring on you before just injecting you with their addictive-ness
and reclaiming your attention. This is a bombastic rap album sure to
please fans of indie rock, punk, and rap alike with its beat heavy roots
and powerhouse presentation. I'll give it a B. -- Alex Steininger, In Music We Trust