As evidenced by the ever-delayed albums by Golden State, NWA and Red & Meth,
supergroup albums always take a long time to materialize, if at all. Enter the Scorpian; Project Blowed/Freestyle
Fellowship emcee and underground legend, Abstract Rude, half of BC’s Swollen
Members, Prevail and fellow
Canadian, the prolific Moka Only.
Just months after rumours surfaced of their collaboration, the album dropped.
Soundboy, Rob The Viking takes the
reigns for most of the album and picks up where he left off on Swollen‘s album. The opening 4 tracks
of the album (Smokin’ In Here, Stop Biting, Rifle Association, And That
You Can Quote) are all beautifully crafted beats. However, Moka produces the next 2 tracks and the
album loses some of its continuity. Moka‘s
beats aren’t bad but they are very noticeably different from The Vikings. This happens again on Get What You Want which really sticks
out and sounds like a Lime Green
leftover.
The brightest moments of the album come with the incredible tracks To Make Millions and She’s Always Right. The first is about
their desires to be rich while maintaining their artistic integrity, Madchild comes through for this one and
kicks the best verse of the album and maybe the best of his career. She’s Always Right concerns their lady
problems and the beat fits the subject matter like a glove.
While the album doesn’t contain a bad song in the 13, it wasn’t without its
problems. Along with the aforementioned production continuity problems, there
are too many solo cuts (3 from Moka,
2 from Abstract, 1 from Prevail). The worst thing about this is
that the album provides the best results when the 3 share the mic. But even
with these scratches in their armour they have released a dope album. If Codename:Scorpion assembles again with Rob The Viking producing everything and
more cuts with all 3 emcees then they could really takes things to the next
level.
