This release is a collection of tracks that were made around a decade ago but have seen the light of the day only a couple of months ago. An album that seems like someone's old journal that you stuble upon by chance and that gives you a glimpse into this person's past life. The songs seem in fact very autobiographical, and the numerous spoken interludes are like the cutouts from magazines, brochures and newspaper that one might have glued to the diary's pages in between paragraph (I'm not into journalling, but I know plenty of people who do that).
Musically, the fact that each song has a different producer (including Kanye West... is it THAT Kanye West?) guarantees a great deal of variety, but still the tracklist sounds cohesive and flows naturally. Even the quirkier episodes (for example the acappella interlude "Thanks I Get (For Loving You)", with it's energetic beatboxing and the layered vocals) never sound out of place.
Defnite D showcases a deep and warm voice that narrates the lyrics with consistent flow, never over the top, always measured and precise like a swiss watch, even when the vibes become more energetic like in the freesyle piece "Nice Guys Always Finish Last". The beats as we said are very heterogeneous, mostly old school I would say, with a lot of samples from other songs that always fit perfectly and blend perfectly with the rest.
Some might say that the album is a bit too long, and to be fair it has a significant duration, but at the same time it feels like a conscious choice by the artist and if you get into the flow of the narrative I believe you'll get to the end without excessive effort, and possibly wanting to go back and relisten to some of the tracks. Maybe not everyone will be sold on the larg presence of spoken interludes and movie dialogue inserts (I'm not a big fan of that either usually) but again, it seems to fit the vision and I'm sure it will be appreciated by many.
Overall a convincing release for Defnite D's debut here on _nsigned! Hope we'll see more of their stuff here in the future.