Reviewed that new G-Side. Check it out if you haven’t yet. Right now, I feel like it’s their best release yet, though it’s also the most insular and contained; Curren$y-like, if that makes any sense.
In less than two years, G-Side have gone from being one of the most slept-on rap groups around, to well, kind of taken for granted. That will happen when hip-hop’s having its RSS-obsessed, gimmick-happy, bloggy moment, and ST and Clova’s concerns are consistency and ever so slightly widening the lane they’ve carved out for themselves. So, on iSLAND– the equally estimable follow-up to January’s THE ONE… COHESIVE– they’re still indefatigably grinding, and just as geeked-up on the fact that people write about them in magazines and on blogs.
But there’s something darker creeping into their music here, confounding the occasional misreading of COHESIVE’s glowing, cathartic hip-hop as “escapist” or head-in-the-clouds. Forever right there in the background is their keen awareness that, when it comes down to it, they ain’t all that important to this rap shit. That’s why every interview is a huge deal to them. There’s also their past, rife with tragedy and loss– bouncing around in foster homes, family members lost to cancer and addiction– which they tastefully reveal only in snippets…
Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader?
“Sangrias on the coast of Puerto Rico!!!!”
“Stay-Cation” is my SHIT, man. Thanks for being the G-Side fanboy that you are. I listened to you huff and puff about G-side for almost two years now and I finally latched on. These things take time, man.
Eric
1 Dec 11 at 9:28 pm