The Equation - Y=MC+P

The Equation is a duo comprised of an MC named UllNevaNo and a producer named Da God Knowledge, and this album is a full-length collaboration by just the 2 of them (with one guest appearance, by Tislam The Great), which they released for free on MySpace. They give me kind of a throwback golden era feeling, with the sample-driven beats and the low fidelity of the recording, and it kind of makes even the flaws of the record work in its favor: UllNevaNo sounds really mushmouthed and doesn't enunciate his words really clearly, but it sorta gives him an Erick Sermon vibe, and some of the beats sound really poorly mixed, like they're way in the red and a little distorted, but it's like listening to some dubbed cassette back in the day. And there's a whole math theme running through the album, given the title and all, with a lot of dialogue samples from the movie Pi, and a couple kind of instrumental tracks with just samples and no rapping that work as interludes, which really makes it feel like a cohesive album. They're performing at the Turntable Club this weekend, and once again, you can download the whole album on Rapidshare, but of course I'll give you a song-sized sample to check out here:

The Equation - "Come Back 1994" (mp3)
This is one song that really reinforces the whole nostalgic theme of the album that I was talking about, and it's also one of my favorite tracks. I don't really like to live in the past too much when it comes to hip hop, but '94 really is an unfuckwithable year.

Labels: mixtape/album review, mp3