Damn! The Midwest is really
kicking your sorry asses, isn’t it? Common’s
releasing dope albums left and right, Lupe
was rookie of the year, and Royce is
coming back with an album with Primo. Shit,
Eminem’s sittin’ on his ass putting
out trash like Touchdown, and you
motherfuckers still can’t win! I’m
not gonna get too much into why New York’s not doing shit, or why the South and
the West Coast are whining more than Fifty
losing a SoundScan battle – point is, the Midwest has got a lot of talent. So how can relatively
unknown Chi-Town native Soulstice hope
to compete? His second solo album Dead
Letter Perfect aims to answer that question.
Having most recently released the album Dark Water as one half of the group Wade Waters, Soulstice is
has returned to the solo circuit. Seeing
as how he attained a Masters Degree in Electrical Computer Engineering, it’s no
wonder that Soulstice is armed with
intelligent rhymes and subject matter, as illustrated on Dead Letter Perfect’s opening cut, Southside Ride: “Explode on
contact, lines of shrapnel/You know it’s raw when you hear the vinyl
crackle/Pen is my muse, drawn not from women and booze/Uh, a little bit but not
enough to get it confused/Soulstice spit grimy and gritty as hell/Not too many
other cats rep my city this well/Chi-town, ride down, Southside we live/Got
sick night game plus a nine-to-five”
Armed with witty references (“bad motherfucker like Oedipus“), the lyrical acrobatics
continue on High as You Wanna, Be Perfect
and Book of Days. Fellow Wade Waters group member Haysoos stops by to trade verses on World’s On Fire in a display of
excellent chemistry. Things get exceptional on the extremely soulful Not Perfect, where Soulstice takes some time to admit his faults: “Nah, I’m not perfect, in fact sometimes far from it/Might break rules
depending on how bad I want it/Sometimes patient, sometimes I’m not/Sometimes
forget to appreciate what I’ve got/Like those right next to me, hold me down
steadily/I believe in destiny but just can’t let it be/So my ends justify my
means/Cuz the end goes to get that green, knamean?”
Simply put, there isn’t really much to gripe about on this
album. Be Strong and The Time aren’t quite as good as the
other tracks on the album, but that’s a pretty small complaint considering how
dope everything else is. Nearly every track is riddled insightful lyrics, and
is accompanied by a soulful backdrop. I supposed you could say that a lyricist
of this caliber deserves better production, but the best painters don’t always
get the best canvases. Ultimately, it is the somewhat average production that
keeps the album from being truly great, rather than just really good. The production
is nothing to scoff at, as it provides (for the most part) an adequate listening
experience.
“It’s blazed whenever
I put pen to page/Got your neural transmitters on and fully engaged/With the Rakims and Nas-es becoming extinct/I put ideas out for open minds coming to drink.”
This rhyme really illustrates Dead Letter
Perfect, well, perfectly. Amidst stiff competition in the Midwest,
Soulstice has emerged as a very
formidable emcee. Dead Letter Perfect
isn’t quite perfect; for that matter, neither is Soulstice – but that’s fine – he doesn’t pretend to be.