KRS-One - Maximum Strength 2008: Album Review
KRS-One, Maximum Strength 2008 (Koch, 2008)
Maximum Strength is the latest selection in the KRS-One album of the month club. Past installments have included Adventures in Emceein', Hip-Hop Lives, and probably a bunch of other shit I've long since forgotten.
BEWARE
From what I understand, this is a collection of odds and ends dating back to 2000 or so, rather than a release of Kris' shelved would-be final album for Jive, which was also called Maximum Strength, from circa 1998. So the production is kind of a hodge podge. But that's also been the case with pretty much every other KRS-One solo. So you'd hardly know this isn't a collection of all new material.
PICK IT UP
Where as that first track was genuinely enjoyable, if not really that good, a la something from '03's Kristyles (also released by the Koch Graveyard), this one suffers from some synthesizer issues. It sounds like really half-assed budget Dr. Dre.
ALL MY MEN
Kris drops pearls of wisdom (so to speak) all over this album. Some of it amounts to, "Kids, don't smoke crack" (literally), but some of it's fairly insightful. I wonder if the focus in putting this together was to gather the more conscious joints. Or maybe that's just a sing of how preachy he's become in his old age, not to mention how outdated some of his reference have become.
STRAIGHT THROUGH
Finally, the organic drum sound that's usually lacking in some of these latter day KRS-One releases. This one's got a rather ridonkulous frantic breakbeat feel. Probably a lot of MCs wouldn't know what to do with a beat like this. KRS-One just kinda does his usual ranting and raving.
ROCKIN' TIL THE MORNING
More budget Dre a la "Pick It Up." This one, if it had better drums, might have actually worked. It still wouldn't have necessarily been a good idea for a KRS-One album. Notice how he shouts out Nas and Kelis at the end of this.
THE KOOL HERC
Not about Kool Herc per se. But he starts out talking about breakdancing, before he trails off into how he's the best man, he did it.
BUSY BEE SHOUT OUT
Busy Bee gets 15 seconds (literally) to blather about something or other.
NEW YORK
From the department of bizarre ideas: A ballad about the greatest city in the world (or has it been long enough since 9/11?), over the music from Tevin Campbell's "Can We Talk?" with some random R&B broad reinterpreting the chorus. No, really.
HIP-HOP
It's hard to believe KRS-One has gotten this far in his career without doing a song called "Hip-Hop." Or maybe he has, and he just forgot about it in his old age. There's more talk about crack (which is wack), in this one, including a reference to the crack mayor of DC, Marion Berry. I should note that, despite its title, this is also a ballad. But I guess at least it's not a remake of a Tevin Campbell record.
LET ME KNOW
Ever wondered what a KRS-One reggaeton record would sound like? Well, your long national nightmare is over. Or actually, it's just begun.
NAH
KRS-One goes in about these damn intellectuals, over a track that's refreshingly uptempo and minimalist, if not that good otherwise. I didn't notice any references to Jeff Chang in particular, but there is some teh ghey innuendo in the first verse.
THE HEAT
Nightmarish synthesizers + hackneyed heat metaphors = no, thank you.
COMMENTS: As far as KRS-One's post-'03 output, I'd probably put this second only to that album he did with Marley Marl last year. The only reason I'd even hesitate to say for certain is that a lot of that stuff I only listened to once or twice before I tossed it on the garbage pile. The thing is, some of those albums were so bad almost anything would be better.
BEST TRACKS: "Beware" "All My Men" "Straight Through"
BONUS VIDEO: "Radio Song"
