Al Great - The Alevan Collection presents Great Expectations (Dedication to Will)

Al Great is a rapper from the group Alevan, in the past I've written about an Alevan album and another one of his solo mixtapes. A few weeks ago I saw him perform at the Teop release party at Sonar and picked up a copy of this mixtape, which is dedicated to a friend of his named Will who passed away in May. He's got a lot of songs on here in that whole theme, tributes to his friend and songs on the whole topic of death and loss, including a freestyle over "T.R.O.Y." and a song called "Screamin'" that I think is really kind of harrowing and thought-provoking. Still, I think I'm more interested in listening to an Alevan release with original beats by E. Dott than an Al Great releases full of flows over industry, even though he's got a good ear for picking beats, just because he already kinda sounds like Jay-Z and hearing him over familiar beats just make it all sound really generic. You can download the whole thing on Datpiff.com.

Al Great - "Make It" (mp3)
He raps over a couple beats on this by Alchemist on here (another Al!), and this is one of my favorites, Jadakiss's "We Gonna Make It."

Labels: mixtape/album review, mp3