The Black Family - The City Is Ours

The Black Family is a Baltimore crew I saw at the 5 Seasons earlier this year and got a CD from. According to their MySpace page, the group's members (Victor Black, J-Nina (a.k.a. Joey Nine), Double P., and Ill Will) are all blood relatives. There's another rapper named CDP who makes a couple appearances on here too. I think they're tight with PX (Parts Unknown) and their label, Street Legal, too. All the original tracks on here were produced by Young Bleek (not to be confused with the little homie Young Leek) and I think the beats are my favorite thing about the mixtape, all those shrill organ lines and bells, it's a nice unique sound. Even their choices of industry beats is pretty good, though, they take some less obvious tracks and make them their own. On the track "Real Niggas Do Real Thangs," they diss Bossman and Skarr Akbar, I don't know why, but whatever, beef is wack.

J-Nina, Double P. and Victor Black - "Say Bye Bye" (mp3)
Nice outro track, hot snare drum programming.

J-Nina - "Put It Down" (mp3)
I wrote a big article a while back about dudes rapping over Baltimore club music beats, and this track sounds like that's kinda what they were going after, but the beat is actually at a faster BPM than club music and sounds way harder and more aggressive, good shit.

Labels: Bossman, mixtape/album review, mp3, PX, Skarr Akbar