Sometimes people approach me and ask for a little favor: Recommend a Hip-Hop album. So I usually point out classic stuff like “Low End Theory” from A Tribe Called Quest or a more modern sound like “The College Dropout” by Kanye West. But after they listen to some of the songs on these albums I mentioned, you can see their face going from “Nice, let’s listen” to “Ah, this is not what I’m looking for”. When this happens my friends, spin “Tronic” in your sound system. “This is the aggressive stuff i want!” is what some will say… I wouldn’t define it that way, but I know what they mean.

Tronic is mind-blowing not only for the mainstream listener, but for the eager hip-hop fan too. Starting with the synth-heavy ‘Long Story Short’, the album is full of rich basslines and drums that shine all over the tracks. With such dedication to the sound of the heavy drums it’s not a surprise that one track is called ‘Give The Drummer Sum’, and features the instrument as the main highlight. But Tronic is not resumed to this definition. Actually this is a great piece of work that mixes futuristic aspirations, 80′s influence and keyboard use with boom bap rap and the characteristic Detroit sound. Tracks like ‘Hold It Down’ and ‘RePPIN For U’ clearly show the heavy Prince influence in Black’s growth. The later one has AB singing a melodic chorus that could fit perfectly into any sexy groove of The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. But not everything here is a change for Black Milk, ‘Try’ takes the producer to the usual soul based sampling. He admits saying there would be no soul samples on the album, but I guess you can’t run from a fresh sample.

Finally, on the rap side of the songs, we have a more comfortable Black Milk rhyming with good punchlines. Maybe the content is not the best, but the Detroit native improved on his microphone skills. And if all of this is not good enough for you, ‘The Matrix’ brings two heavyweight MCs (and a legendary DJ) to help Black Milk.

With many “hip-hop album of the year” nominations and comparisons with Kanye’s 2007 album, Tronic is the perfect album to bump on your car sound system or just to enjoy on a sunny day. Actually calling this album the underground “Graduation” (by Kanye West), is not too far from the truth, but I’m pretty sure that Kanye never had such strong and ready-for-loud-speakers beats.

by Arthur