Slaine
A World With No Skies

Written by Dominick. Published: Saturday, November 13, 2010.

One of the elements that is so sorely missing from most of Hip-Hop’s aesthetic nowadays is the true street element and experience. It’s been too long since any one emcee took us burrowing through his specific hell on earth in spectacular fashion. Slaine Carroll has been collecting kudos for a minute now both in his native Boston and nationwide for his willingness to paint the not so wonderful effigy that is his world…A World With No Skies is how he chose to illustrate his microcosm of life on his debut LP, and it might be best to take a strong swig of your favorite whiskey before listening to this operose yet sincerely preferable output.

Slaine, a member of the brash crew’s La Coka Nostra as well as the Boston super crew Special Teamz is what I like to call a straight shooter. He’s direct in his lines whether we find them too heavy or not and his album sort of follows that same suit. Plenty of stylized, hardcore rhythms become his pallet for busting lyrical barrages that test and question not only religious dogma (“Voices Of Apocalypse”) but also many of our own National, personal and social quandaries. “The American Way”, particularly I found outstanding, forthright and unrelentingly impartial. Over an almost bluesy electric guitar riff Slaine lays his true identity out for us all the while pointing out that it’s just apart of the larger scheme of an American wasteland. It’s one of his towering moments on an album that is largely transcendent in it’s self examination.

Slaine broods through a good portion of A World With No Skies, but it’s not that unhealthy, repelling brooding. Nope, it’s more like the poetic and magnetic brooding you get when DeNiro or Pacino go mobster on a rampage on us, fused with a steadfast hardcore production diet. “Til’ The Day That We Die” finds Slaine showing off his pliable and dexterous flow with a tale of loyal, semi-suicidal and hopeless grandiose that is a very frequent formula component on this album. It’s with tracks like this that we get to relate once again to Slaine’s account of street lore and vivid and violent imagery through his relation of emotion, i.e. his fatalistic mentality and back against the wall, underdog posturing. It’s always a great route for an artist to take, especially when the artist really has lived on those societal fringes. In this case Slaine, I think, really isn’t playing much of a role or talking about experiences he had years and years ago…I think he’s talking for the most part, about his life before he scored a role in a Ben Affleck film (three or four months ago), perhaps even now.

While Slaine’s bona fide boulevard experience powers much of A World With No Skies things might get a lil’ too dark and redundant for some. I mean, the final stretch of the album that contains “Ghosts”, “Insomnia” and the Everlast assisted “The Last Song”, while tremendous when examined in a hardcore rap context, are all still ferociously tormented play by play’s of the realities found in the hood that won’t exactly emanate overly positive vibes. “Ghosts” is such an bumpable track musically that you may not notice the fact that Slaine’s describing the torture he endured as a kid or the abhorrent scenery in his neighborhood involving burnt out drug addicts and crime that could flare up in an instant. I think that’s counter productive to what Slaine is shooting for really. I believe his goal on this album was to show folks that Boston ain’t all Guinness and Red Sox games…to give the most austere personal record of his existence possible.

“Landscapes” is perhaps the most notable team effort on A World With No Skies as well as one of the most pressing beats doled out as well. Over a head jerking set of drums and very Catalan-sounding strings, Slaine takes the I-95 south to Philly and gets up with two very like minded artists in Vinnie Paz and Reef The Lost Cauze for a virtuoso performance. “Crillionaires” is another concatenation of the same ilk, except Slaine bands with a pair of New York realists in Ill Bill and Q-Unique and the beat work is decidedly much more raucous.

Slaine is what he is…A rough and tumble, straight talking Boston homeboy that will just as soon buy you a drink as he will hurl one in your direction if you cross him. A World With No Skies is his audio biopic and it’s not one that conveinantly leaves out any of the nitty gritty facts. It’s an in-grained exercise in not only machismo but skill. Slaine is a proficient emcee and while you might be shocked in some of the lyrical avenues he chooses to turn down, don’t let it distract you from the fact that technically he’s widely gifted and more un-afraid than most to speak his mind. This album is probably not one that will have a huge demographic. I basically think that anyone who enjoys the dialog in a good Tarantino or Scorsese film would also have some appreciation for what Slaine brings forth here. At the same time all those that wish to venture outside of their “safe” and hunky dory rap world’s, this might be a good litmus test for what your threshold is. Just remember in A World With No Skies you better dress warm and keep your ears pinned back, it won’t be a Sunday picnic.

$17.25 out of $20.00

-Dominick “BIG D O” Ledezma

Category: Reviews