Dope album by Double A.B. Here’s a review from okayplayer.com:

After grinding as a battle rapper for years, New York emcee Double A.B. is putting less emphasis on scathing punchlines and drawing more from personal material. Diesel is a cohesive and vivid Gotham City auditory memoir where just the appearance of certain guest rappers—Cormega, Nature, Vast Aire, among others—invoke grit and restlessness.After grinding as a battle rapper for years, New York emcee Double A.B. is putting less emphasis on scathing punchlines and drawing more from personal material. Diesel is a cohesive and vivid Gotham City auditory memoir where just the appearance of certain guest rappers—Cormega, Nature, Vast Aire, among others—invoke grit and restlessness.

The production on Diesel is solid, and you won’t find any club joints on the 16-track collective. But one of Double A.B.’s strong points is his unswervingly clever wordplay—something that’s refreshing in a world of short attention spans and ringtone-ready tracks that fall short in lyrical content. The record traverses the usual hip-hop narrative—girls, poverty, drugs—but draws upon witty metaphors and inventive rhyming (echinacea, what?) to deliver an underground view of Double A.B.’s NYC.

A highpoint is the C-Rayz Walz guested track “New York,” where the emcees get adjectival about New York over a minimal, tense beat, “New York grimy/New York gully/New York Shiesty/New York Hungry.” Other standouts include Double AB talking up his whip, “Maxine,” as if she were a woman, and the twanging, down-home ditty to fam, “Neighbors.”

What Double A.B. does on Diesel is create a throwback record that reminds you of how high the bar was once set for emcee. His rhyme pattern, flow and cadence come off as effortless but not thoughtless. Maybe all rappers should prep for full-lengths with battles.

Title        [The Diesel                                 ]        ░██▓
Artist       [Double A.B                                 ]         ██▒
Label        [Armed and Brutal   ] Genre  [Hip-Hop       ]         ██░
Quality/Size [44.1  @VBR  82,7 MB] Ripped [11-18-2008    ]        ▒██
Grabbed from [CDDA               ] Enc    [Lame 3.97     ]        ▓██
Website [n/a                                                    ] ▒██

░██
Track Time  Title                                               ██
®–÷¬ ®–   ®–      -÷-   -“   ¾¬  -                        ¬  ██
██
01  04:26 Mr. Belvedere                                       ██
02  04:47 Neighbors                                           ██
03  04:11 Take Me Away Ft. Cormega                            ██
04  04:54 What To Do                                          ██
05  03:35 Maxine                                              ██
06  00:44 Revolution Intro                                    ██
07  03:30 Revolution Pt. 2                                    ██
08  04:40 Cuban Cigars                                        ██
09  03:30 Love Potion                                         ██
10  04:20 Come-N-Play                                         ██
11  04:18 New York Ft. Swave Sevah and C-Rayz Walz            ██
12  04:22 Find My Dough                                       ██
13  04:16 The Diesel Ft. Bill G, Rich Mo, Vast Aire, Dom      ██
Pachino, and Karniege                               ██
14  04:08 Double Dutch                                        ██
15  04:05 Save My Soul Ft Nature                              ██
16  04:23 Dedication                                          ██
Totals                                                          ██
16  64:09 min                                                 ██

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 1:44 pm and is filed under 2008 Releases.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.