The plight of Eyedea has been a long told hip-hop parable on how talent doesn't always produce good music. Both a Scribble Jam champion in 1999, and an HBO Blaze Battle winner a year later, Eyedea wields a variety of styles, ridiculous flow, a penchant for storytelling, and a distinctive nasal vocal. Meanwhile, partner DJ Abilities is a two-time regional DMC champion and arguably one of the underground's best DJs. Unfortunately, their sophomore release, E&A;, brings up the same question prompted by their debut, First Born: With all this talent, how is it that these two can't come up with a solid album?
Here, it may easily be chalked up to a kneejerk change of direction. Seemingly taking the negative press surrounding First Born's pretensions as a universal distaste for rap records that display topical depth, Eyedea makes a deliberate move away from heady concept and into the worn realm of the angry b-boy: E&A;'s material here ranges from songs about wack rappers, to rap fans, to the rap industry, and tacks on a song about glass as an afterthought.
Sometimes, the approach works-- usually when progressive means are attached to it. "Reintroducing" opens the album with a serious bang, with applause and a rigid drum loop bookended by upright bass. But Eyedea's impassioned vocals are what really drive the track home: As Eyedea delivers his lines, DJ Abilities simultaneously scratches them, causing an incredibly weird effect I've never heard before. "Now" is tied together by an interesting piano vamp, with Eyedea styling all over the cut, and switching from a slow-motion chant to an impressive staccato flow that's tracked by Abilities' constantly evolving jazz-drummer speed-shifts and drum rolls. Songs like these lean closer to more of a Quannum-style sound, and they open the album, leading to high expectations. The remaining songs, however, follow traditional song structures, their beats and lyrics largely failing to impress or remain with the listener.
If anything stands out on E&A;, it's DJ Abilities' turntable talents. He's far from the level of professional awe-inspirers like Q-Bert, Nu-Marc and Cut Chemist, but he comes through shockingly strong on "Reintroducing" and "One Twenty". Still, his production is off. Fundamentally speaking, his drum work is solid, if ultimately uninventive, and his general aesthetic falls squarely within the tried-and-true boundaries of barebones, mid-90s-styled jazz-hop, a style that's worked well for hundreds of others. The problem lies with his sample choices and lack of creativity in composition: Check his played-out 80s bass nodes, car alarms, and irritating spacy synthline on "Star Destroyer", or the cartoonish, accelerated saloon piano and cliched beat programming on "One Twenty". Although his ambient approach goes well with the purpose of the album, he tends to make poor choices where beatmaking is concerned.
Eyedea's lack of intriguing topical choices is a problem area, too. It's understood that he doesn't want to be labeled "the borderline Anticon conceptual guy" but when your most ambitious tracks whine about humankind's domination over nature and rely on estrogenic reflections, there's a problem. You'd think a Scribble Jam battle champion would have some punchlines, right? Then again, you'd probably also think a DMC champion DJ might have some decent samples up his sleeve.
Granted, the album does hit in both departments on occasion, from the dark, reflective beats on "Glass" and Eyedea's emotive vocal performance on "One Twenty", but the duo's retro approach doesn't provide them the proper setting to display their technical prowess. There's no doubting the wealth of talent displayed on E&A;, but until they find a better producer, or at least find a way to better utilize their obvious chemistry, they'll likely be doomed to more identity crises like this one.
