Silver - Through The Storm

Does exactly what it says on the tin-Razeone are looking to exploit the gap in the uk hip-hop Market and Silver truly does have a commercial appeal about him-there is no doubt that this track would not be out of place in a club.
However, is there anything exceptionally different about this “uk version of hip-hop” and the mass imports we get from the US giants like 50 cent, ludacris, kanye west, Nas? - In the long term I can’t see Silver surviving clashes with goliaths such as the above even as good a producer ‘sermstyle’ seems to be-evidently shown from the dramatic, emotive, operatic like entrance merging with the shuddering beats in the background-I can’t help comparing this with the mammoth hit from Justin Timberlake featuring T.I. - “My Love”-produced by the commercial master-Timbaland. The difference between T.I. and Silver is the way in which the lines are delivered as T.I. comes across as a cheeky chappy he knows his lyrics aren’t raw and meaningful like Tupac or biggie-whereas silver glosses over a tough aspect of the music industry with no apparent grittiness or feeling in the lyrics admittedly there is a slight sadness emanating from the voice but I think the music carries the record.
This problem comes from silver’s background-he seems to be doing okay owns a coupla record companies and has been born into a prosperous family-“silver comes from “silver spoon”-he is one of the best drum n bass DJs in the world but i think his Bedford roots come through on this single-the most credible rapstars especially UK ones tend to have the husky harsh voice to evoke empathy but on top of that justify their record with lyrics from a real place-e.g. its hard to maintain a tough image when your using verses like:
“Wrote some dumb rhymes”
“Touch their love inside”
“I wanna be the man my mother would approve of”
I would have to say silver is nothing more than a pretender-making up a shammy rough background for himself to fit in, unfortunately he doesn’t haven’t a tag on the London grime artists who are not only lyrically blessed but have proved they can be commercial at the same time. Silver would get eaten alive by Chipmunk, shredded to bits by Kano and swept aside by Skepta.
Its reasons like this why I don’t understand what silver’s trying to do with this track-are you gonna be hip-hop/r n b and use cheesy lyrics or are you gonna rap from a real place.
Having said all this though-for what it is, it’s allright and would last a few weeks in the charts.

Review by Subhaan khan

San Andreas - Man or Monster

I reckon if I had more music knowledge-i.e. of record development and how its put together I could criticise this album with more confidence-i think when you have to review outside your genre things get a bit more difficult-anyways:
I’d label this as screamo, I think the album gets better as you listen to it-the middle tracks are the best and then it levels out. I wouldn’t say these guys are wholly original as there are definite sounds in there that seem American but I think that being as experienced as these guys are, they’ve picked up a few tricks along the way.
Enter Shikari springs to mind when listening to these guys, however, whereas shikari tend to have that indie kid sort of appeal this is lost on San Andreas-which I don’t think is a bad thing as they seem to take their music seriously and if you can get past all the screaming the thrashing guitar and the lyrics are pretty easy to rock out to.
There are few moments where they throw you a real curve ball-like the barbershop quartet style interjection on Leave Teddy.
Overall it’s a pretty wholesome album and I’m sure they pack a punch at gigs but i just can’t seem to get away from the fact that every song seems to be sung in the same pitch and tone-which does link them all together but at the same time makes the album slightly tiresome and flat a bit like Bloc Party’s first 2 albums.

Review by Subhaan khan

VV Brown - Crying Blood [Remixes]

Crying Blood was a decent song but I don’t think that it has the same malleability, as say Cassie-me & you to justify a CD with 4 remodels on it. Contrary to the lack of potential of the track-V.V.Brown’s clearly a girl with some talent-more songs like leave demo from VV Brown would be much appreciated-even her myspace contains several remixes of which the dust boys one is the best-funnily enough not on the promo. Though the weatherall remix is the best on the promo, V.V.Brown still manages to annoy after screeching to the top of some notes. Overall, it’s fairly repetitive and lulls me into an apathetic stupor.
5 minutes of this and you’ll be begging for a disco house injection from snake-hipped Ed Mac of Friendly Fires-shoot up some shoegaze and watch those worries drift away.

Review by Subhaan Khan