genesis elijah - deh pon road
new star of the uk hip hop scene ? quite possibly.
following on from his recent involvement with the wordsmith album comes this solo set on new label broken souls production. from the man known as genesis elijah. as with wordsmiths recent release this is not an album proper, but more a current state of affairs release, compiling various tracks that have hit the circuit, some of them are direct from the demo scene, whereas others have been released as singles and even picked up radio play. as per usual, several well known uk heads make appearances, proving that genesis has all the right friends and calls in favours when the need rises. the album is put down in 3 sections : the road, the art, the truth, and gives the appearance of a sort of grand master plan behind the flow of the tracks (almost like an old school concept album ?). so amongst the solo joints we get skinnyman dropping rhymes on the excellent '3rd order', wordsmith and others on 'gun talk', and klashnekoff on the excellent sc-fi reggae infused 'jah bless'. these guests don't overstep their place, they stand alongside genesis who has an impressive presence with his own passionate verbal groove, placing his well thought out raps in a direct forceful style, combining street level stories, there is an abundance of violent language early on in the album, but this is then stripped out later on, as his own intense parental emotions come more to the fore. making the album come over as a personal journey of discovery for a young black British man.
this is good stuff, especially for someone who is aware of his sonically stretched budgetary limitations (he makes reference to his restricted finances in the both the accompanying pr and lyrics), but is still able to squeeze out some fine production from his studio partners (tom caruana who produces wordsmith tracks being of particular note on his contributions). the lyrics range from the humorous music industry baiting digs in the simple but effective echoed piano chords of 'seems strange', to hard hitting social observations, and by placing speeches from martin luther king and malcolm x throughout, you realise that genesis is a serious man with a lot to get off his chest, and, after all, anyone who declares he trusts mystic meg more than bush or blair is surely worthy of investigation!
as a starter pack this is a solid album, with a few radio friendly hooks, (the kanye west styled 'more to life' with its sped up soul backing samples), and plenty of hard hitting words, which hopefully, sets the scene for genesis's future plans. good luck to him, though i suspect he doesn't need it as his talent will definitely get him noticed.