High Focus Records are proud to present new signing to the label Ramson Badbonez with a brand new album ‘A Year In The Life Of Oscar The Slouch’ produced entirely by Charlie Mac which saw its official release yesterday!
This concept album covers the journeys of Oscar The Slouch as he navigates month by month through the gritty crime ridden streets of inner city London featuring Fliptrix, Rag N Bone Man, Jam Baxter, Mystro, Joker Starr, Genesis Elijah and more! We gave one of our newer writers Adam the opportunity to review the album, here’s what he had to say…..
High focus bless us with yet another dope album, this time in the form of Ramson Badbonez first release on the label. Now first off I feel I have to admit I was pretty unfamiliar with Badbonez before this. I’d heard bits and pieces here and there such as his fire in the booth and the track with Jam Baxter on Baxters Gruesome Features album. I had always enjoyed what I heard but this was my first full length listen. Oh how foolish I have been!
But what an introduction, 12 solid, and impressively realised tracks that actually made me worried how many dope fucking rappers I’ve been slyly unapreciating.(probably quite a few, it’s a good time right now) With a natural style almost incomparable to others, he’s a very confident and fluid mc.
‘A Year In The Life of Oscar The Slouch’, is, as the title suggests, a journey. As the man says himself in the booklet it’s a “conceptual representation of crime in the city element, at one of its highest activity points encapsulated within a specific time period .” He basically wrote the review himself there hahaha, which is good because doing a write up of an album this good is a very ying yang experience.
It’s easy to lavish praise on every aspect, but at the same time I still want you to realise I genuinely loved this album and I’m not just saying a bunch of nice shit about it for the sake of it. Obviously there have been a lot of people killing it, even just in the last year, but Badbonez has a place near the top right now!
With boomin production from Charlie Mac and Ramson switching his flow throughout its hard to not reload the whole album over, even more so given the amount of heavy features, honestly it sometimes shows up rappers having so many sick collaborations on an album but this is not he case here. He sounds comfortable alongside all of them.
I won’t list them all but appearances from Jinxta JX and M.A.B from Three Headed Beast (who’s twitter account is a must follow, pure jokes) are probably my favourites. This album is also responsible for making something exist I never would’ve imagined, Jam Baxter and Joker Starr on one track ha, but the result is great.
Essentially I think the best thing I can say here is GET this album if you like hip hop, which if you’re reading this, then you blatantly do. I highly doubt you’ll regret it. If you do you probably wanna put yo weezy album back on!
Oh and also be prepared to be asked by people if you were just listening to sesame street samples.
Words; Adam
ORDER ALBUM ON CD & LIMITED EDITION DOUBLE VINYL AT: http://www.high-focus.com
ORDER ALBUM ON iTUNES AT: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/yea…
Ramson Badbonez – ‘A Year In The Life Of Oscar The Slouch’ Album Teaser (Mixed by DJ Jazz T) [VIDEO]
Ramson Badbonez – ‘October – O.T.S (Oscar The Slouch) Featuring Fliptrix, Rag N Bone Man & Row. D.
Ramson Badbonez – November /Desperation (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
Ramson Badbonez – ‘December / Let The Others Know’ (OFFICIAL VIDEO)