You start to get tired of lines like “Contortionists, swallowers of knives and fire-eaters / Nonconformist performers that wont change, and I won’t either” (from the title track) and “I’m higher than Hendrix when he made ‘Purple Haze’ / I’m amazed / As long as i got herb to blaze” (from “Dynamite”), lines that betray a sort of self-absorption that rappers all too often fall into. You see, it’s on that second listen that the holes start to show, the warts lose some of their makeup and become those prominent little blemishes that you just can’t, hard as you may try, take your eyes off of. …and the Magic disappears all on its own.
Really, it sounds like one of those little underground treasures that you’re almost unwilling to share with anyone for fear of widespread acceptance killing some of the magic. And there’s a unity to the album that makes it sound like an album, not just a bunch of songs that Mad Child, Prevail, and third Member-slash-producer Rob the Viking decided to put on a compact disc. Mad Child and Prevail play off of each other like they’ve been doing it for years (which they should, because they have). On first listen, however, it sounds amazing.
Swollen Members have produced the latest proof of such a statement, an album called Black Magic that’s almost well-produced and slick enough to fool you into thinking it’s a fantastic album. Just because hip-hop is independent of the trappings of major labels, it isn’t necessarily a guarantee of quality.
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