Razor’s Edge 8/27
Goodie Mob – Age Against The Machine
When this album dropped I played it to death and found myself mainly likely the tracks in the middle with the intro and closure tracks not doing too much for me. What essentially happens is that Cee-Lo decides to get the group back together and forces in his experience doing his solo pop work into Goodie Mob’s scheme. He also decides to show off that he can still spit on the mic even though he hasn’t really done it in some time. On the track “Pinstripes” he matches wits with T.I. to showcase those rhyming skills are still intact.
I do tend to make fun of conscious rap but I secretly love it and Goodie Mob does a good job of giving some tracks that should speak to the masses but the masses aren’t ready to hear this level of truth. “Nexperiance” touches on the state of hip hop today, Power talks about white power from a black perspective. The name of the track used to be White Power but they ended up cutting off the white part of it. I also read an interview where Cee Lo wanted Em to jump on the track and spit a verse but it didn’t end up happening. The song Amy pops up later in the album to touch on race relations specifically interracial relationships. Janelle Monae hops on their track “Special Education” to give the kids something to hope for and remind them that it’s good to be special in their own way and I always laugh when this gets mentioned but to them VIP stands for Very Insecure People. No sir, VIP will forever be stuck in my mind as Very Important Penguin from a sign that the Techno Penguins were holding at E-Zoo.
The tracks that Cee-Lo end up taking over pretty much are “Power," "Vallelujah," "Ghost of Gloria Goodchild" and "Amy". They sound like songs that were probably cut from his solo albums or that he was getting ready to put on a new solo album but decided to put the Mob back together and included them on this album. Once you hit the song, “I’m Set” that’s where the meat/heart of the album comes into play and the next six or seven tracks are really great. This is album is like a really good sandwich that’s stuck in between some nasty Wonder Bread. I suggest throwing away the slices and just eating the meat from the middle.