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.
UK emcee Mr Drastick continues with his weekly Monday FREE downloads leading up to Christmas. For today’s upload Mr Drastick goes in over the instrumental ‘Dopeman’, Produced by Cook’N’Soul. Drastick adds his own spin to the track with a concept that is best explained by the man himself….. “Just me messing around by comparing my lyrical skills to the same potency as the purest cocaine. On this song I’m known as Santo Drasticko. A notorious drug lord from Mexico who passed away two years ago, but legend suggests he shall return one day and claim back the streets of Mexico.”
Soul King also known as SK from Likwit crew releases another track from ‘The Diaspora’ called ‘Blesson’ produced by Mos Sef. ‘The Diaspora’ comes out April 2014 with features from Tabernacle Mcz, Planet Asia, E rule, Agallah, Tri State, Styliztik Jones, Danw Gun and more.
While recently in Germany for a brief getaway, UK based hip hop artist Just P decided to use the time to, write a few songs over various commercially used instrumentals, by established Hip Hop producer Apollo Brown.
When home, P decided to record then mix the tracks so he could release them in the form of a free download EP. The songs have varying themes from, being away from home to, things P finds hard to say in person.
The artwork features a shot of the Stuttgart sunset taken by P and all songs on the release were mixed and mastered by Just P.
Stream Smif N Wessun’s new reggae-inspired EP, “Born and Raised.” The EP is available now with over a dozen Limited-Edition packages to choose from featuring customized album merch: http://duckdown.com/bornandraised
Tracklist:
01) Born and Raised feat. Jr. Kelly (0:00)
02) Shots in the Dark feat. Jahdan (3:47)
03) Solid Ground feat. Junior Reid (7:05)
04) These Streets (11:00)
05) Kamikaze feat. Jahdan (14:57)
06) Rich Gyal feat. Jahdan (18:57)
Deluxe-Edition (Bonus Tracks):
07) Sound Bwoy Bureill Live feat. Judah Tribe & Jahdan
08) All Massive
09) Solid Ground (Instrumental)
10) Born and Raised (Instrumental)