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Eyedea & Abilities
E&A
(Epitaph)
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Championship-caliber battle MCs often fall flat when it’s time to write songs. Supernatural and Canibus can embarrass the competition but can’t seem to put a topic and a hook to a hot beat and make it stick. Eyedea, ’99 Scribble Jam and HBO Blaze battle champion, and his DJ/producer, Abilities (himself a DJ battle vet), don’t want for their inherent creativity on their Epitaph debut, but the narrow range of the album’s topics and beats is disappointing — the duo have abandoned the intricate-storytelling-over-avant-garde-beats ethos of their last album, Fist Born (Rhymesayers). Other than on "Glass," E&A is full of tales of wack rappers and annoying rap fans. The biting "Act Right" features ho-hum semi-disses like "In less than a sec Abilities is at the bar/Half these guys don’t even know who we are/But we still act like stars." "Reintroducing" captures the crucial sonic innovation the duo are known for: it sounds as if you were hearing Eyedea spit, but it’s actually Abilities cutting the vocals in and out. The lightning flow and the cuts of "One Twenty" also represent an impressive display of pure skill. Eyedea’s flows and his lyrical instincts are still top-notch, but Abilities’ spectacular DJing is undermined by mediocre beats. Maybe the standards have been set too high for this promising underground duo. Or maybe this is their attempt to dumb their raps down to appeal to a mass audience. Either way, they’re pushing a little too close to the realm of the workaday underground hip-hop they’ve transcended in the past.
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