REVIEW: Dilated Peoples – The Platform

Artist: Dilated Peoples

Reviewer: Adrunk

So, I just listened to the Dilated Peoples album “The Platform”. At least, I think I did. I seem to remember listening to something anyway. Damn. Well, I sure can’t remember anything about any Dilated Peoples albums, I’ll stick in their CD again and listen the whole way through.

Hey, you know what? “The Platform” is produced by The Alchemist. Mmmmm, yes please. I’ll have a glass of tepid water and a slice of bread and butter with that as well. Make sure it’s white bread too. As for the MCs, they mirror the excitement of the production perfectly. When I hear Evidence flow, all I hear is blah blah blah blah blah blah. Never has anyone made braggadocio rap so indescribably boring. And it’s not just the lyrics, which are bad enough on their own. When he’s on the mic, he sounds like a tired McDonalds worker, mumbling his premeditated customer relations from within the talking dustbin at the drive thru. Show some enthusiasm you pathetic looking specimen. His cypha buddy Iriscience is slightly iller, he’s at least a bit more energetic on the mic. However, it scares me greatly that he looks like B-Real with an inflated head.

Talking of the rap Tommy Chong (Sen Dog = Cheech – you know, the one who doesn’t do as much as the other one) he pops up to drop a verse on ‘No Retreat’. After nearly 8 minutes of just Dilated Peoples rhyming (terrifying, huh?) the sound of the second best Latino MC ever bouncing his jumpy ass all over the track is as refreshing as a bong filled with Cali’s finest weed. The track here is laced by T-Ray, and is very similar to the majority of the beats here as it’s very typical of generic hip hop from the upper underground. A great number of them are by Evidence and/or Alchemist, which results in a very dull one-track-mind sound. If you ever tried to blow the dust off Alchemist’s imagination, you’d suffocate.

It doesn’t help the average production when the sole topics of Dilated’s lyrics are sort of third person observation braggadocio which seem to the same on every song. Or maybe it’s just me. The only track which differs from the solid Dilated rhyme stencil is ‘9 Years In The Making’, which is a narrative detailing Dilated’s rise to stardom and is actually not that bad, despite Ev flowing at his most pathetic pace yet.

An Aceyalone and Dilated Peoples collabo? This track will surely be a savior to insomniacs everywhere!!! This track’s titled ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ – If this is ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’, I expect the things to come to be shaped like a Tylenol PM. The Alkaholiks pop up to collab too, on ‘Right On’, on which E-Swift coasts through production duties with a smirk and a simple bassline. Now having Tash on a track is usually a guarantee of excitement and energy – not so here, his boundless saliva-spraying slurs sound watered down, as do his off-point lyrics.

My one and only reaction to this album has consistently been “whatever”. ‘Ear Drums Pop’ – whatever. ‘Expanding Man’ – whatever. The only point I started to enjoy myself was on the Babu produced track ‘Service’, cause the beat’s mad nice. When Evidence stuttered into life, I changed my mind.

Now the album by no means picks up anywhere. But did they really have to finish it off with a remix of ‘Ear Drums Pop’ featuring Planet Asia (whatever), Defari (yawn), Phil Da Agony (i think not), and Everlast (bwahahahaha!!!!!)???

And so, an album which redefines the word average. There is nothing remarkable here whatsoever. If this were a car, it would be a Hyundai. If it were a US state, it would be Ohio. If it were food, it would be low fat cream cheese. It is a complete travesty and a crime against the fun of hip hop. If in George Orwell’s classic novel “Nineteen Eighty Four”, Big Brother and the Party had decided to produce some hip hop music for their sterile people, this is what it would have sounded like. Cause it would have been safe – it would have produced no emotions in the people at all, wouldn’t have induced any sort of extreme enjoyment which could lead to self thought and thus revolution. Yawn.