tyler
Mark Allerton wrote:
>
> "Pleasure And The Pain" - Project 23
>
> Project 23 is Cleveland Watkiss' new drum & bass project on Dorado, and
> being a fan of his from way back I was really looking forward to hearing it,
> especially reading some of the comments about the thing from him and others
> in mags like Straight No Chaser.
>
> All of which makes this 12" doubly disappointing. It's not good drum & bass,
> the vocals aren't up to much, and the lyrics are wack. The Peshay mix on the
> flip is good stuff, but you could easily strip out all remaining traces of
> the original and still have a great track. Watkiss is a great singer -
> listen to him on Outside's "Big City" for example, but on "Pleasure" he's
> not stretching himself at all - there's no tune worth speaking of and it
> ends up sounding little different from the MC'ing he does at Metalheadz,
> which I can't imagine anyone queueing up to hear in it's own right. The
> lyrical content can be summed up as "I'm really into jungle ever since I
> heard it on Kool FM in '92", which is the sort of cack-handed attempt at
> establishing street credibility that I always hated in early attempts at
> jazz rap - it's really only one step better than "Hey, we're rappers and
> we're rapping over jazz". In other words one step better than really very
> bad indeed.
>
> All of the above makes it sound really awful. It isn't - it's OK, but just
> nowhere near as good as I think anyone has a right to expect from someone as
> talented as Cleveland Watkiss, especially in the light of his own hype about
> what he's doing now.
>
> ..Mark..
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mark Allerton Mark@warmspot.compulink.co.uk
> http://www.compulink.co.uk/~warmspot/