Mike Malachi - The Collection: Greatest Hits (Music In Me Productions)

Last year, I wrote about Mike Malachi's album Malachi's Way on this site and in Mic Life Magazine, and he's kept busy since then with a remix album, Ron Rico's Way, by Ron Rico, the club producer who does all his tracks, and an upcoming album called The Book of M.A.L.A.C.H.I. Vol 1: The Man Alone Living Artistically Complete Higly Intelligent. But in the meantime he's put together kind of a greatest hits collection, featuring tracks from all those releases, as well as earlier material from his demo and his first mixtape, Raiders Of The Lost Art: Still Searching For Hip Hop. The new tracks sound dope, especially the collaboration with Skarr Akbar, which is featured on Malachi's MySpace page. But I think my favorite tracks on here are the ones from Ron Rico's Way, which are remixes of songs from Malachi's Way that are sometimes superior to the originals. Overall, I think this is a more consistent disc than the album was, although it still has some indulgent moments, like the long interview track at the end that was just boring and unnecessary. And I wish it had the Bmore club version of Jay-Z's "Show Me What You Got" that Mike and Ron did a few months ago, though, that was dope.

Mike Malachi - "I Been Looking Around (Remix)" (mp3)
This is one of those Ron Rico's Way remixes that I think is a total improvement, much better beat but still incorporates the sample from the original on the hook.

Labels: Mike Malachi, mixtape/album review, mp3