Grieves seems like a good dude, if a pretty intense and single-minded one. He reminds me of an aged-out, nomadic skate rat who posts up in a downtown coffeeshop to scribble poetry about the 10 lives it feels like he's lived so far. He's not a pseudo-intellectual, and while he's been through some shit, he's also not a whiner, preferring to be positive about his future, occasionally almost to a fault. He is far from content with his station in life, but he balances his complaints and worries with a reflective and forward-moving worldview, a methodology that Rhymesayers MCs (and the hardcore punks who preceded them) have mastered, ensuring that the smallish number of people who like them will really like them. As for bystanders like me? I wish him the best, but could I get some breathing room, please?
Grieves asks us to serve as his casual confidants on Together/Apart. He dwells on the down-to-earth drudgery of being broke, kicking addictions, and getting over ex-girlfriends (On "Heartbreak Hotel" he describes one of them as "the scalpel to open up my doubtful," which... wow); all of which makes for an interesting fit with the pop savvy and light colors of Budo's production work. Grieves is more than game to match his collaborator's slick, itchy Okayplayerisms, switching between rapping and singing as his partner stacks up the soul chords and funk flourishes. Over Budo's double-timed synth squirts for "On the Rocks", he switches to a laconic drawl reminiscent of Bay Area backpack OG duo Latyrx; on "Boogie Man", he more closely recalls the intense confessionalism of labelmate Slug on the spare verses, before the chorus expands into a more gelled-up rap-rock hybrid.
The duo provides compelling surface-level reasons to hear them out, but in the end, it all adds up to well-produced, confidently delivered Rootsy boilerplate. After an hour of this, though, Budo's tracks start merging together into a session-level slurry, and you can listen to Grieves' laments only for so long until you start checking your watch, if not occasionally raising an eyebrow at an awkward turn of phrase. It's all encapsulated on the "Juicy"-style coming-up narrative of featured track "Lightspeed", into which Grieves incorporates the positive admonitions of Blackalicious' "Make You Feel That Way" and Mos Def's "Speed Law". The pieces are there, as they are on much of Together/Apart, but the execution is lacking. Grieves' breathy self-serious vocal rubs the wrong way against Budo's lush, sepia-toned track, his shout-outs to Tamagotchi toys and Fleer trading cards (what, no "Boy Meets World"?) are weirdly TMI and just sort of bland, and a clunky chorus (you don't need to follow "once in a while" with "sometimes," because they mean the same thing) compel me to agree with Tony Soprano's opinion of "remember when." "Landspeed" is the sort of tale that works best when its narrator has much more distance between now and then; like the rest of Together/Apart, it's the work of a precocious artist who perhaps assumes we should care about the details of his life, instead of compelling us to listen.
