Altsounds - Del the Funky Homosapien & Tame One

This is quite a mysterious album. While there are songs from it on Youtube, there's very little real information I can find out about "Parallel Uni-Verses." There are a few brief references to the single 'Flashback' and the video to go with it, but generally the album seems to be flying pretty low under the radar. This is quite surprising, as Del The Funky Homosapian's been around for quite a while and is quite prestigious in the scene, and Tame One, though a relative newcomer, has had nothing but high praise for all of his work.

"Parallel Uni-verses" is quite a low key affair, with the general tempo of the album being slow and relaxed, for the most part. Even the quicker songs have a sense of lethargy that is not boring, but is very calming and reassuring. Del The Funky Homosapian and Tame One play quite a lot with rhythms in the album, setting rhymes to offset beats, leaving spaces and tiptoeing around the track to create an interesting dynamic that offsets the slow tempo and makes the whole thing very interesting.

The tracks are very light and airy. It's like sitting out in your garden on a sunny day, with a cold beer. It's relaxing, with little need to use the brain muscle to decipher the rather bland messages that are being discussed in the lyrics. In most rap, the lyrics are a very major part of the whole picture, but on "Parallel Uni-Verses," this is not the case and it's more the sound of the voice and the rhythm of the vocals that create the pleasing final product. It's like when a mother talks to her baby, the baby doesn't have a clue what your saying, but it still likes the sound of your voice, and is placated. That's kind of how I feel when I listen to this album, except I wouldn't want to suckle on either of these men's nipples!

As I say, there is little in the way of original thought in any of these tracks, with most of the content being about rap, about the music industry and how certain elements have influenced it. This is certainly the case on the album's best track and first single, 'Flashback' which talks about the music that the two rapping men listened to while growing up and the people who inspired them to do what they do, and who influenced them the most. While this is a fair homage to those key figures in the history of the genre, who cares? It seems like they're just saying these things to prove they know about rap. There's nothing new that we're learning, and maybe there will be a couple of names you won't recognise, but what good are names without context?

The producers of this album is a group called Parallel Thought, and as you can see from the shared word in the title, this album is mainly about the production, which I think is fantastic. I really enjoy the tracks on this album, they're tight and they're interesting. They haven't set out to bass you to death, or mess your mind up with beats all over the place. It's nicely composed and I'm very impressed with what they've done. The tracks also perfectly complement Del the Funky Homosapien & Tame One's voices and it all sounds very good, it's just a shame that what they are saying isn't as interesting as the music behind it.

I may be explaining a little poorly, but I'm not saying that the words that are used in the rhymes are bad, because they're not. The words they use to rhyme are very clever at times and the technicality of the rapping is very good and their rap as an art form is very tight but it's like seeing a very good landscape painting. Yes, technically that's very good and I'll see it and applaud it's beauty and the skill involved, but what does it give to me long term? What does it tell me, what does it ask me? How does it engage me in any way?
I only received a sample of the album to review, which I assume is a positive selection of tracks, there's not going to be anything ground-breaking on the album that isn't on this sampler. Overall, this is a solid piece from the two, but they've both done better in the past. The fact is, I do really enjoy listening to this album, and I may buy it to get the full thing, at which point, I'll come back and let you know.