Old school loyalists who despair at the current digital, Neptunified state of hip hop will find much comfort in Go With The Flow. And while it’s natural to distrust Luddites who contend that this music?classic funk breaks sampled and looped?is the only true kind of hip hop, it’s hard not to enjoy the work of Ice-T, Pete Rock, the Jungle Brothers, the brilliant KMD and many others. The fluency of the raps contrasts with the more languid, Dirty South style prevalent today, but most striking is the paucity of gangsta materialism (even from a youthful Dr Dre, producing the unimpressive D.O.C.). A reminder that braggadocio about rhyming skills can be just as wearying as that about dollars and diamonds.
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