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The Crowned Prince SNEAK PEEK ALBUM REVIEW

Disclaimer: I went to high school with Alex Kresovich. But I’m not telling you that so you can question my objectivity; I’m telling you so you know that we’re not from the hood. We never dealt drugs, we never held heat with our waistbands, and we never wore chains that hung down to our ankles. But there is something mysterious about where we’re from (Ithaca, NY), that instills a love of hip-hop in all its residents — white, black, brown, purple, whatever. While the expression of my love is restricted to reciting all the lyrics to ‘One Love’ while I’m at a stoplight, Alex Kresovich (who back then went by the Atlanta-inspired pseudonym of ‘Dirty Bird’), has the balls to make records. I’ve also chronicled his career by reviewing his first two efforts for our school paper. So even though I haven’t seen his lanky, red-haired, pasty white ass for over two years, when he hit me up with a request to review his newest effort, I couldn’t say no.

And it’s a good thing I didn’t. His new album, The Crowned Prince, is a fine showcase of underground lyricists, but more importantly, it’s an awesome demonstration of Alex’s ever-improving production skills. If you can look beyond the amateur mixing characteristic of most independent hip-hop projects, you’ll find a treasure chest of head-banging, thought-provoking beats. Not to mention that they were all produced with FruityLoops or Adobe Audition. Someone get this kid an MPC! (To be fair, he did use a keyboard for the more complicated riffs.)

The Crowned Prince didn’t really have a beat I didn’t like. Alex’s production has a definite east coast feel. Many of the beats utilize a minor progression with strings, and he takes advantage of the high-speed soul singer samples, like all good east coast producers since Just Blaze. But he shows his versatility over and over, sampling upbeat xylophone, rock guitar, claves, and even a little jazz flute. Alex judiciously chose not to rap on this album, instead relying on a cadre of underground rappers you’ve probably never heard of. His beats certainly made their jobs easy. Alex’s production sets the mood on each track, going from a pensive, relaxed feel to bass lines that will make your neck sore for a week.

While the sound quality varies over the course of the album, a few beats stand out above the others. Most notable is “Hey Hollywood”, the album’s first single. The beat features a hard-core electric guitar sample over the hook, with a smooth, Pharell-like piano riff for the main course. It’s crisp and professional-sounding, and the rapper, S-Caliber, takes over the floating piano line like a seasoned pro.

Like any compilation, the rap talent on this album is a spectrum, but overall, the spitters were impressive. The best rapper by far goes by the name of Blaze Rock. He controls two tracks on The Crowned Prince, and both of them are over two of the best beats on the album. The first, “Make Me Complete,” is a ballad rap about a lost love, a nice change from the usual sexist woman bashing (which this album does not lack). The other, “Light the Fuse,” is a classic club banger. Blaze Rock’s sharp diction and powerful flow goes well with the latter theme, and I find myself nodding along to the lines leading up to the hook: “This isn’t throwback music, this is no wack music, this is don’t-hold-back music, I got the lighter fluid, let’s do this!”

Hystwise is another strong M.C. who makes up about half of the album. His flow is more laid back than Blaze Rock’s; it reminds me of Malice from Clipse. He spits a mournful track over “Prayers Unanswered,” and more than one song about women with a more classical hip-hop approach than Blaze Rock’s (from “My Autograph”: “You wanna get it in, I see it in your eyes/ Sayin’ that you want my autograph, you want your kidneys signed”). But my favorite Hystwise track is “Sneakers,” whose metaphorical meaning sneaks up on you until the third verse:

This is for them girls out there, ya’ll like sneakers
If you’re sentimentally valued, I’ll keep ya
If you just for runnin’ around in, I’m leavin’
Nice features, good sole, I see ya.

Finally, Alex caps off the album with a cameo appearance by Radius, one of my old favorites from back when Alex was still Dirty Bird. ‘Watching’ is one of the most emotional tracks on the album. Radius raps about the true problems in a lyricist’s life—overcoming hardships to get some recognition and enough money to eat—rather than flaunting guns and ice like most pop rappers out there. He spits:

I can’t believe what you folks condone
I held shattered emotions from a broken home
And every day got me feeling like I’m so alone
Until I started feeling crowded by my spoken poems
All these words and no songs you can throw me on?
Just to rap I gotta smoke weed and hold the chrome?

But not everything on an underground album can be perfect. Some tracks sound like they were recorded in someone’s bathtub. “More Than…” has a generic feel to it, and the rapper PHZ-Sicks tries to use Jay-Z’s newly found sing-song flow with half as much success. S-Caliber’s other track, “Gears of War”, has a promising concept of a soldier in the midst of war, but by the third verse it’s become another boring battle rap instead of the political commentary it could have been. And some of the best beats on the album are stuffed into 60-second interludes, like the nasty flute-laced “Bootlegger Drama Interlude.”

But with self-produced underground albums, one can’t be too picky. The Crowned Prince will definitely be worth the five or ten bucks Kresovich is asking for it, and with all the proceeds going to charity, it’s a crime not to cop the album. Plus, you’ll get to check out some amazing amateur production, and some more-than-decent lyricists as well. And wouldn’t you like to be that guy who tells all the fair-weather fans, “Shit, I been rockin’ Poizun since his debut with the Dirty Bird!”

Too bad, ‘cause I’m that guy.