KWCW

From the rumbling of train wheels that opens this inventive and fresh new album from Seattle’s Common Market to the final track, the songs are full of raw energy and amazingly orchestrated beats and rhymes. Producer Sabzi (Saba Mohajerjasbi) and emcee RA Scion (Ryan Abeo) met each other only recently through Seattle’s Baha’i community, but their synergy and integrating styles speak to a longer partnership. Their songs are full of joy, exultation and frustration, with Scion’s intricate tangles of words and thought processes layering into Sabzi’s forward-moving beats.

Sabzi, who also produces for the Seattle group Blue Scholars, seems to feel more free with Scion to experiment and improvise with a wider array of drum beats and samples on the Common Market album. While his work with Blue Scholars emphasizes a more introspective, calculated quality, his Common Market tracks blossom into unabashed wide open sound.

For his part, RA Scion serves up interesting and creative rhymes, unhesitant to pose questions or probe issues in religion, politics, or world events. His rhymes and rambles, set to Sabzi’s beats, often feel like intimate conversations, snatches of words continuing to echo after the song has ended. Without an ego to represent or an image to promote, Common Market’s debut album feels endearingly like a raw first step showcasing an enormous amount of potential for the further development of West Coast and Seattle area rap.

- Ariel

“I’m so tight that god bless everything I write” rhymes Aceyalone at the beginning of his new album, “Magnificent City.” Unfortunately, his pretensions of emcee glory are rarely fulfilled by the new album. From the front cover shot of Aceyalone decked out in aviator shades to the presumptuous stream of lyrical flows that leave his mouth, his new collaboration with Rjd2 follows the track of so many so-so hip hop albums: the beats are sweet but the rhymes are lackluster.

As a founder of Los Angeles’ Freestyle Fellowship and Project Blowed, not to mention the man who helped create a definitive sound for West Coast rap, the expectations for Aceyalone’s new album-long collaboration with producer Rjd2 were probably set too high. Rjd2, a producer whose dense beats and introspective production skills have been highlighted in his collaborations with Blueprint and his independent releases, weaves together excellent sounds from diverse samples. But Aceyalone, with several key exceptions, backs up these tracks with rhymes that are slow, plodding, and formulaic.

While some songs are incredibly catchy, including “Fire” and “Disconnected,” others are particularly painful to listen to. On “Caged Bird,” Aceyalone revisits an overused and obsolete metaphor to the jingling of obnoxious Chistmas bells. “Some birds don’t deserve to be caged/” he rhymes, “They gotta fly away and search for the ways/Bein’ locked up is worse than the grave/I live by the words of the page.” On the disappointing “Heaven,” Acey offers us this insight: “Heaven ain’t got no stairway/Heaven ain’t got no ghetto/Heaven ain’t got nothin’ to do with you/Cause you a devil.” Some songs show Aceyalone back in form, offering tight and innovative rhymes that speak to the intellectually rigorous side of hip-hop. In particular, Acey shines during his story-format pieces, including “Solomon Jones” and “Junior.” Still, besides its seamless production by Rjd2, the distance between “Magnificent City” and Aceyalone’s previous releases is tangible.

-Ariel