What a mar­velous con­cept for a sam­ple based producer’s album: solely use sample’s from one respected songwriter’s back cat­a­logue. In this case, it’s Oh No enter­ing into a part­ner­ship with Galt McDer­mont, most famous for com­pos­ing the musi­cal “HAIR.” He has been sam­pled many times over the years, and seems quite amenable to hear­ing his music used in hip-hop. Cou­pled with Oh No’s con­stantly evolv­ing pro­duc­tion tal­ent and a host of MC guests like Buck­shot, Wordsworth, AG, LMNO, Vast Aire, Pos­d­nuos, MED, etc., this album has a fan­tas­ti­cally con­sis­tent qual­ity. From the rolling state­ment of own­er­ship on Buckshot’s “Get Mines” to LMNO’s story of a “Hank,” you get a great and fun vibe from using this pro­duc­ers music as the basis for Oh No’s beats. One of my favorite tracks include Aloe Blacc on “Sec­ond Chance,” a first per­son story of a man get­ting in his car late one night, tired, nar­rat­ing his way through a car crash and the after­math. With Galt’s mourn­ful strings cut up to cre­ate a more epic sound­scape, this song sticks out for it’s deep sub­ject mat­ter and dis­tinct sound. Else­where, Pos­d­nuos from De La Soul (no, the other guy.…noooo, the other guy…yeah, that one) turns in one of the most uplift­ing tracks with “Smile A Lil Bit,” encour­ag­ing us all to have a bit of a bet­ter out­look. Murs beats his chest proudly and defi­antly, with rea­son, on “In This,” with great cuts and tri­umphant sam­ples back­ing him up. Out on Stones Throw, this album should be avail­able every­where, is well worth the effort to check it out. Enjoy!