Midaz x El Michels Affair

The rap world has had its fair share of concept albums. Approaching the long player format in such a manner is still most easily found in rock stuffs, but emcees have been more and more frequently attempted to string together a series of tracks in order to form any semblance of narrative. Some of the discs work better than others – and although most don’t wind up sporting too much in the way of cohesiveness, the efforts should be generally applauded. Any dense backing story, though, goes a long ways towards establishing a disc as something to notice. As the press release figures…

Despite having one of the shorter careers out of their contemporaries, the El MidaZ Affair were one of the biggest groups of the early 1970s…The members of the El MidaZ Affair moved on to new phases in their life, while El MidaZ himself became a recluse, never to be heard from again.

Settling on El Michels Affair as the best backing music for such a project, the Florida based emcee and producer MidaZ the Beast snagged a clutch of funky tracks and went in on each as if the disc was going to be heard world wide. Hopefully it will be. But is MidaZ the Beast’s marketing plan going to work?

There’ve been any number of high profile, much promoted free albums for download. And while the world is still groggy from Drake’s The Best I Ever Had (and no, the disc doesn’t deserve the gushing adulation that it’s received) there will eventually be a mix tape that again captures the rap world’s ear. It may or may not be El Midaz Affair, but even if the tape falls off into obscurity, it’s going to most assuredly remain on hard drives for years to come.

With a mention of the Purple Tape “Colors” is all languid funk and MidaZ explaining what each color in the rainbow means to him. Of course, as he describes his faded green and burnt orange attire, one should wonder what’s going on. But the clothes that MidaZ wears aren’t the point, it’s his ability to adroitly render the entirety of the world and its color scheme in just five minutes. There’s no overt politicism here despite the breadth of ideas explained, although there are socio-political topics briefly broached elsewhere.

Vis Major makes a few appearances alongside MidaZ. And while the guest emcee isn’t anything akin to a slouch, his flow doesn’t fit as effortlessly in with the musical backing as the headliner here. The problem could be as much the decision to include the other emcee as the top billed name. But regardless of that minor squabble, as “Glaciers of Ice” begins and listeners realize that the backing track’s been lifted from El Michels Affair Enter the 37^th Chamber on which the funk and soul combo works out some Wu classics, a smile should be spreading over everyone’s face. If that’s not the case, the confluence of cultures and creativity has been completely lost and one might need to head back into the backlog of music and film to figure it all out.