The album? Oh, it's excellent. It's Scarface and a couple other guys I hadn't heard of, though that doesn't mean they're not big-name up-and-comers: I love the rap I listen to but I don't really keep my ear to the ground. The other two guys are fine and all but almost nobody is on Scarface's level. There's writers and then there's authors, and 'Face falls into the latter category. The album holds together really well and flows beautifully; last year in an interview with Houston So Real, 'Face lamented the death of the Album With All Good Songs. He sounded like a lot of people who remember the seventies as a time when a new album was an event, and when buying an album was in some ways like buying a book, with an expectation of a total experience instead of just some good jams.

This sort of talk will get you called an old man if you're not careful, and besides, pining for The Days When is dullsville. But at the same time, a guy who thinks about things that way is the kind of guy who's likely to deliver a record that gives you plenty of value for your $9.99, and the new Scarface album, people: it's awesome. It's complicated. It's pretty. It's almost entirely mid-tempo, which is really interesting to me: the songs mostly have a very romantic, seductive lilt to them, though it's a glowering sort of romance. The string samples are delicious, and the overall groove is a little like a darker, slower, more cautious version of ConFunkShun. It plays real nice on "repeat." And everybody seems to be ignoring it. Don't.