Soulstice – Dead Letter Perfect

    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.

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