The intro to Canadian hip hop duo DPRTMNT's 22 track album
The Golden Age reveals that their name is based on the Canadian superscience agency that produced Wolverine and Alpha Flight. So the nerdcore code says I at LEAST had to give them a try and recommend some good tracks for your hard drive...
Before the internet, I used to go to local underground rap shows and spend call center paychecks on music and teeshirts by guys who rapped at night and worked at UPS and/or attended community college during the day, and this record makes me nostalgic for that time. Like a lot of shit I bumped out of my beat up Toyota pickup back in the day, Deadschool and Iron Samurai's laid back slacker rhymes are hit and miss on the early tracks, but by the time you make it to the middle of this record, they get pretty confident. Songs like
Skipping Classes, Alloy Anniversary, the Lost Boys, The Bomb Squad, Retrospective, Shadow, 10th Cavalry and more span the gamut from a'ight to hella tight. Back in the cassette tape days, it would have hurt that I had to skip some of the early tracks, but
The Golden Age makes the grade in the iPod era. It scores with healthy doses of comics references and true school hip hop beats and rhymes.
Click here to download it free, give it at least one listen through, then delete the tracks you don't like. And with the money you save,
go buy some Alpha Flight comics, bub!
holla! -samax.
