They're Right -- Curren$y is Worth Your Time

I imagine the keystroke for a dollar bill is as regular in the e-mails of guys like Curren$y as they currently are for nightbus bands using triangles, hearts, and clovers in their unspeakable names or sleazy pop stars confusing kids in lingua sexting. Blind to the fact that Curren$y even exists, or for that matter, put in time as Master P and Lil' Wayne's swamp boy -- it was there trees became a way of life. I'd be dumb to try and explain any other recent histories of the rapper, or fabled mixtapes, or collaborations/catalog appearances, but it does seem the man was too looped to be a real Def Jammer. He's on the subsidiary, where the strange ones go now. That may bode well. Absent from most hip-hop these days, above or below ground, Curren$sy rhymes with a new, albeit perpetually blunted (make that "jointed" as he doesn't do White Owls), flow. Pilot Talk is an accomplished hip-hop album due to it's crispness. Stoned immaculate and mumbled flows stay buyout among creamy samples. Somewhere on the axis of Steely Dan -- New Kingdom -- Native Tongues his template is impressive, nostalgic, but kinda' like the first time you heard Sensational. Remember?

In a year when I'm increasingly listening to actual "albums" and "eps" by hip-hop artists, and not just singles (Big Boi, Drake, Freddie Gibbs, Pill) it's a feat to be the favorite. Pilot Talk will settle nicely into fall and likely right onto a year end list.