Free Moral Agents - Everbody's Favorite Weapon (GSL, 2004) No one likes traditional song structures anymore. And Free Moral Agents (Isaah Owens) understands that.  But it's a shame.  While the exploration of new ways to express ideas is the focus of art and music, occasionally the structure holds fundamentally distinct notions together in such a way that everything makes sense to the listener.  There are moments of sense on this slab off of GSL, but only moments, no coherent statement, which removes a degree of listenability from the offering.  The conception of each track poses more interest than the music itself, which sounds like a million tiny ideas glued together to make up an album.  "Gem from a Broken Rock" is two song ideas combined into one, fusing some soul warbling, compliments of Mendee Ichikawa, and flow from J.  The beginning of the track has a nice electric piano line augmented by another dubbed out key voicing.  The femme vocals kick in and we ride it until the drums take over with J beginning to verbalize.  I refuse to comment specifically upon the rap stylings based upon something that Dose One has said: "It's not bad rap. I'm just not feeling it."  But while the raps keep coming, the femme vocals serve as the chorus, ostensibly condensing two songs into one.  A couple songs deserve to be mentioned as somewhat superior to the rest; "Omar on a Swing" and "Talk Show Host" are mildly tasty licks.  But overall this slab from Free Moral Agents doesn't come off as an album.  Surely, everyone involved in the recording of this album had a good time as they were performing.  Unfortunately, gluing many good ideas together doesn't create an album.

Intellekt & Dirty Didgits - Intellektual Property (ATF Records, 2006)

When white people do hip-hop sometimes it scares the bejesus outta me.  There really isn't any theorem that can accurately tabulate the percentage of good white rappers to the black folks.  But probably, that's not the point of music.  The point is, if it's good, it's good.  Intellekt and Dirty Digits live in a place that isn't the most well known for jazzy samples and funk, but more for gentlemen that have gold teeth and scream. Oh yeah, and Outkast.  This duo, who judging by their press pictures are in their early twenties, have put together an album that is firmly rooted in classic hip-hop but peeks out from behind that specter to embrace new electronic ideas and techniques.  Most of the tempos on Intellektual Property have basically the same laid back tempo, however that is not a slight on the production of DD.  In fact, out of the tandem, producer DD most certainly is a few steps ahead of his partner.  There isn't one moment that is more or less impressive, but there are times though when IDD attempts something a bit abstract that doesn't necessarily translate from their minds to our speakers ("Mario Kart").  There is feeling on here that is lacking on many newer hip-hop albums; these folks are genuine about what they're saying.  Even if a few times the lyrics swerve toward the mundane ("My Day Off") the production picks up the slack.  Unfortunately, depending on how this group ends up getting marketed and who they can find to tour the country with will dictate their future success. But regardless of that, IDD churns out sample based hip-hop that the lion's share of teams couldn't create.