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In 2005, hip hop fans were treated to an excellent record from supergroup Deepspace 5, containing emcees the
likes of Playdough, manCHILD, Listener, and several others. Those 19 tracks were made up of beats created
by two men, DJ Dust and Beat Rabbi. Since that album, Beat Rabbi has been working on a little project of
his own, with the intention of going old school with his beats. And from all of his hard work comes
Deepspace5oul.
Just to clear up any ideas you may have about this being a hip hop instrumental album, it's not. Though
the instrumentals did come with a pre-order of the album, Beat Rabbi utilized the vocal talents of the
Deepspace crew, along with newcomer illtripp (although he is usually pretty sloppy in the way he flows).
The majority of the songs contain either two of the emcees working together to create a full-length song,
or a single emcee performing for about a minute and a half (maybe a little longer). Stand-out tracks are
Playdough and Sivion in the lyrically enlightening "Beautiful," the Mars ILL-remixed "Lip Service," and
the funky backdrop of "Dance Your Life Away" (as Listener is quickly becoming one of my favorite emcees).
You also can't go wrong with the full ensemble on the title track, where each emcee gets to display his
own individual style.
The downside to this album lies in the style of the beats. They're not bad, per se. It's just that some
genres have a tendency to die out and then, years later, try to inch its way back in, only to receive
mixed reactions from listeners (ie, disco). Deepspace5oul is heavily drenched with the sounds of early
90s hip hop, which doesn't really have a big appeal to the average hip hop fan anymore. While the
production value is great and the mixture of the beats with the vocal talent is on point, I find myself
skipping through the instrumental tracks, especially the more-than-4-minute-long intro.
While the beats may not be a personal preference of mine, they are produced very well, and the sound
quality is hard to match. And the immense talent of the Deepspace crew more than makes up for it. Fans of
any of the members of DS5 will enjoy this, as well as fans of early hip hop artists. But let's hope next
time around, it's a disc full of DJ Dust beats!
- Review date: 2/8/08, written by Scott Fryberger
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Record Label: illect Recordings
