![]() ![]() Genesis was the right way to start, given the wonders it worked as an intro for the ’94 classic. This album never tries too hard, and sounds inspired by the holy grail of lyricist’s Hip Hop it’s modeled after. This album is an admiring and admirable work of art, but most of all it showcases how Elzhi’s own personal stories and rhyme-schemes really do rival the quality of 1994 Nas, in just how captivating and vivid they get, while also sounding effortless. The two longest tracks on here – ones I’ve been giving the most replay to, since discovering the album – especially stand out in how well El was able to make them his own. Just as the instrumentals have an additional detail of being actual live music – which really didn’t happen in the nineties, so isn’t anything to scoff at Nas about for not realizing the potential of – the stories are also totally those of Elzhi’s own. The idea was there all along, to make this a project that would work, but Elmatic truly shattered the expectations of what it working would mean. It’s a live band take on the beats, and many songs go on for extended amounts of time, compared to the Illmatic songs. The main idea of Elmatic – as the name will tell you – is that it’s a sort of cover-album for Nas‘ seminal 1994 debut, Illmatic. I was just as surprised as you back when we found out that this prolific Detroit wordsmith’s masterwork isn’t a studio album at all, but a mixtape. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine (2011)ĭeathspell Omega – Paracletus (2010) AND WELCOME TO THE 2020s! Milo – Things That Happen at Day // Things That Happen at Night (2013) Steven Wilson – Grace for Drowning (2011) Pallbearer – Foundations of Burden (2014) Steven Wilson – The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) (2013) Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers (2012) Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014)ĭead When I Found Her – Rag Doll Blues (2012) William Tyler – Blue Ash Montgomery (2014) Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, The Alchemist, Oh No & DJ Shadow – The Music of Grand Theft Auto V: Volume 2 – The Score (2013) Sandwell District – Sandwell District (2011)Īlex Sipiagin – Destinations Unknown (2011) I spent all my album-listening time, in 2018, listening to stuff from 2010-2015, as well as like the first three/four months of this year. So I channeled ALL of the willpower and determination I’d previously had for hearing all these genre-essentials - over 2,000 of them in the years before that - All of it, into covering the necessary ground for all of this decade’s years before 2016. I realized back then that it was something special, but it’s honestly taken me all this time until today, to realize that it was precisely the motivation I needed. To have an artist whose work you admire, admire your work back. Him answering my message saying how speechless my writeup made him was a bigger form of validation than anything I’ve received from anything I’ve written. At the end of 2017, I was getting such great feedback across the board for my reviews, that I even got encouraged to message Mikko Joensuu (the artist whose album Amen 3 I had as my AOTY in 2017). I don’t know what’s so inviting about making a top 100 albums list of the 2010s, but I noticed at the dawn of 2018, that it transformed from a faraway dream into an active goal. If I had to choose one highlight, one moment that totally changed everything for me and how I came at music-writing, it was the year-end list of 2017.
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