Album Review- Slaughterhouse

Now I have been anticipating this album for months now. So have a lot of "internet"/underground lyricist lovers who have reached for every bit of Slaughter since the group was announced. For the most part, the album does what it's supposed to do, and the second listen through helped it's cause.



To dive into it, I'm feeling the intro "Sound Off" where each of the members uses a format where they start off rather 'normal' then move into a rapid fire flow, "Microphone" where as expected, the emcees talk about their lyrical prowess, and "Onslaught 2" where Joell readily kills his verse.

In fact, the stand out of the album is Joell who I think had a lot to prove. Joe Budden has a huge internet fan base, Royce has the streets of Detroit, and Crooked is from the West Coast so he has that entire base to work with. This seems to be an opportunity for Joell to make some new fans and he takes every chance seriously.



Royce is my least favorite out of Slaughterhouse but he seems to have stepped it up as well as far as base lyricism although he brings more of his well-known street tough talk, though he isn't alone. Crooked I also shares his lyrics about gun clapping and running the streets . The album has it's share of good if not spectacular tracks like "Cut You Loose" and "Not Tonight" which sort of blend into the background except for some exceptional quotables on each one. However, I would have liked to see a more in depth concept like on "Cuckoo" and the single, "The One".



Along with those two songs, "Raindrops" which features Novel (yeah he is still around and doing his thing), and "Pray(It's a Shame)" showcase the more emotional side of the group, exposing why they feel their brand of hip-hop actually has more value than that of most artists today.



Overall I enjoyed the album but I feel as though the group members sort of tried to save some of the best material for solo releases with the exception of Joell who is in a zone right now looking at the past year's worth of music from him. The three skits and 12 actual songs also were a sort of letdown. Those skits could have been either really hilarious or replaced with some more thematic songs, like maybe a story track, or just something like the D.O.A. freestyle. I plan to actually make this the first cd I have bought in about 4 years on Tuesday so I suggest you do the same and support lyricism to hopefully lead the game in a different direction.

Rating: 3.5/5

Comments

  1. thanks for the support. Be sure to check out the archives as well.

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  2. I'll have to check the album. I like The One, and Warriorz offa Royce's EP is hot. But sometimes these cats rap so ho-hum. I don't know much about Crooked, but the others all have lazy days imo. We'll see how I like this. I wish your review went a lil deeper into it

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  3. yeah they do. I think the fact all of them have some sort of solo projects on the way sort of distracted them from the group album.

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