Less of a review than a gen­eral Six­too Appre­ci­a­tion Post, he is one of my favorite musi­cians, hav­ing been absolutely astounded by his Chew­ing Glass and Other Mir­a­cle Cures album on Ninja Tune in 2004. Since then, he has released quite a few 7″ releases on the label that he co-runs with Marco, Bully Records, the most recent of which was a dou­ble pack of music from his score to Next: A Primer on Urban Paint­ing. It shows off his strong cin­e­matic side extremely well, full of moody and dark hip-hop sound­scapes, with the empha­sis on very live sound­ing instru­men­ta­tion. One of the things that made Chew­ing Glass… so spe­cial, was it’s com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tional MPC pro­gram­ming and live instru­men­ta­tion, some­thing which he has worked hard on expand­ing over the past year in all his works. Hope­fully this year will be bring­ing us a new full Six­too album, but in the mean­time, check out all his (and every other artist’s) Bully 7“s, as well as the forth­com­ing mix­tape on the same label. Bully runs tings.

Eas­ily the best hip-hop album I’ve heard this year so far. Thanks to 1200x at the Sole­sides board, I came in con­tact with the DJ Kno pro­duced Cun­nin­lyn­guists instru­men­tals (Strangestru­men­tals) first and was com­pletely fuck­ing blown away. I imme­di­ately sought out the spe­cial 2CD set con­tain­ing the orig­i­nal album (A Piece of Strange) + bonus instru­men­tal disc (Strangestru­men­tals). Most times you hear the instru­men­tal to a hip hop track, and it’s the same loop for 16 or 24 bars with min­i­mal pro­gres­sion, min­i­mal com­po­si­tion. Not so here. Make no mis­take, Strangestru­men­tals is a con­tender for album of the year on it’s own. But let’s get back to the orig­i­nal, A Piece of Strange…I’m still wad­ing through this mon­ster of an album, which has a strong good/evil/temptation/damnation/redemption nar­ra­tive run­ning through it, mak­ing it a strongly cohe­sive album, even though it’s pep­pered by non-MC tracks, employ­ing live musi­cians, guest spo­ken word artists, guest vocal­ists, the works. Nowhere is this more appar­ent than on the clos­ing track, “The Light” fea­tur­ing Club Dub doing live instru­men­ta­tion. The live drum­ming on this track alone is worth the price of admis­sion. Sim­ply gor­geous and funky drums here. Cun­nin­Lyn­guists are from the Dun­geon Fam­ily mold of South­ern hip-hop groups, join­ing the long lin­eage exem­pli­fied by the likes of Goodie Mob and Out­kast. “Since When” in par­tic­u­lar shows off the South­ern style, punch­ing into gear when that bru­tal gui­tar line comes in for the hook. “I hear em talkin ’bout South­ern folks can’t rhyme/some of yall must be out of ya got damn mind” indeed. This vocal ver­sion of “Since When” is extra spe­cial as it comes with a fuck­ing amaz­ing outro not on the instru­men­tal ver­sion. This track is pure strate heat, as the kids say. Strangestru­men­tals leaves off some of the instru­men­tal bits from the orig­i­nal strangely, but who cares? As a sep­a­rate album, this mother stands on it’s own just fine. You get to really get to focus on the incred­i­ble beats from Kno, and this won­der­ful melodies he has either wrote and have played live, or lifted out of the dusti­est crates south of the bor­der. “Amer­ica Loves Gang­sters” and it’s slow churn­ing bass line, “What’ll You Do?” and it’s lovely acoustic gui­tar, the achingly gor­geous majesty of “The Gates” and The Devil’s own nasty brand of funk on “Hell­fire.” Highly rec­om­mended (and make sure to get the instrumentals!)