Raw Produce
The Feeling Of Now LP

Since 2000 to today, it seems almost inevitable to notice a decline in the quality of rap productions, both foreign and domestic. The level of releases, besides having decreased from a quantitative point of view, seems to have heavily suffered from the influence of the media. Artists who once stood out for their skills and a "hardcore" attitude are now releasing bland and uninspired albums, and old long-time rap fanatics (including myself) are starting to dive back into the glorious past, to partially erase the disappointments coming from the current rap-squalor.

A real mess, you might say.
Sure, when you happen to listen to an album like Raw Produce's "The Feeling Of Now LP", the disappointment and dejection seem to disappear, and it almost feels like reconciling with that original spirit that many have lost. Pitch and Cadence, two MCs and producers from Cambridge and the Big Apple, respectively, have come from a long journey that, since the beginning of the past decade, has even led them to open for live acts of artists like De La Soul and Black Sheep.
Regular attendees of the Boston hip hop scene, the two, after some singles, an excellent solo album by Cadence, and an EP containing remixes and b-sides, finally released their debut last year, "The Feeling Of Now LP" (Landspeed, 2004), a splendid and intriguing work, light years away, in terms of quality and style, from current rap productions.

In the 24 tracks of the album (including the singles previously released by the duo, Cycles and Weight Of The World, and two remarkable b-sides, Step Inside The Lab and Up All Night) there's certainly no room for bouncing boom-cha and cutting-edge synthesizers; the recipe used by Raw Produce is undoubtedly different and more genuine: musical flows that are not excessively intricate, intimate and delicate lyrics, jazzy and soft sounds never excessively harsh, with few and trusted guests that enhance the whole (Esoteric, Akrobatik, the brilliant Mr. Lif). Predictable result: a totally unnoticed entry and the album quickly ended up in oblivion.

However, when listening to tracks like Decomposure, with its jazz-ambient introduction fading into an engaging vibraphone sample, the ironic The Wack MC (a true Sucka Nigga of our days), the reflective and somber Grey Skies (beautiful scratch chorus, "a rainy day will make no sunshine...", and the magnificent "airy" atmosphere created by the duo), Metastasis, with Cadence's moving lyrics dedicated to his late mother, or the magnificent I Am Myself with its enchanting piano loop, it becomes almost mandatory to question why albums like this are routinely ignored by a music market that, now, beyond rap, seems almost not to know what it wants anymore.

We leave the answers to these questions for another time; for now, it's enough to recommend the purchase of a masterpiece like "The Feeling Of Now LP" and reconcile with real music, that which is far from trendy clubs, but, in the end, much closer to our soul.

Keep it tryin'!