Review: M.A.B (@MABnoxshuz), EdXl & Diligent Fingers (@DiligentFingers) ‘The Programme EP’

UK Hip-Hop is stronger than ever.  The last year has seen a sharp incline in the stand­ard of mater­i­al put out by home-grown MCs and live hip-hop shows can reg­u­larly be found in most major cit­ies.  This is bril­liant because it’s strength­en­ing the UK scene and enlar­ging the mar­ket, giv­ing new artists a much stur­di­er plat­form and mean­ing that estab­lished artists have more free­dom to cre­ate the art that they want to, rather than hav­ing to bend them­selves to fit the tra­di­tion­ally main­stream ideals.

Three of the artists that have con­trib­uted to the UK scene’s growth are M.A.B, EdXl and Dili­gent Fin­gers, who will drop new EP ‘The Pro­gramme’ on May 26^th.  M.A.B. (Most Annoy­ing Bas­tard) is a found­ing mem­ber of Abnoxshuz Enter­tain­ment, a solo MC and ¹⁄₃ of awe­some UK Hip-Hop group ‘Three Headed Beast’, EdXL is a mem­ber of Abnox­us Enter­tain­ment and Spyn­al Records, a solo MC and sing­er.  Dili­gent Fin­gers has also been work­ing on the scene since the early 2000’s and is anoth­er found­ing mem­ber of Abnoxshuz Enter­tain­ment and the founder of Spyn­al Records, a solo MC, sing­er and also pro­du­cer for both labels.  All three artists have gained recog­ni­tion and acclaim in their own right and this pro­ject brings them togeth­er for what proves to be some­thing pretty special.

Track 1 ‘Tune In’ starts with the noise of a radio tun­ing in between sta­tions play­ing pre­vi­ous work from the artists before land­ing the listen­er into the present ‘It’s the pro­gramme, it’s more than a move­ment…’ set­ting the tone per­fectly for the rest of the record.  All three artists start as they mean to go on, there’s some great word­play here and the deliv­ery is expertly handled, pitched between aggress­ive and mean­ing­ful.  The omin­ous-sound­ing beat sup­ports the vocal, enhan­cing the effect of the per­fect delivery.

Track 2, ‘The Pro­gramme’ is built on a joy­fully old-skool style beat with gold-stand­ard pro­duc­tion.  The vocal’s from all three artists play around the beat impress­ively, cre­at­ing the own rhythms to counter that of the beat.  ‘Back Thru the Ages’ is track 3 and our three MCs con­tin­ue to jus­ti­fy the atten­tion they have all received on the UK scene with more bril­liant word­play and top-notch delivery.

Track 4 ‘Fam­ily’ opens with some head spin­ning vocal prowess, spit­ting fast-slow-fast-slow and main­tain­ing rhythm and mean­ing, and a banging beat that plays it’s part but doesn’t take any­thing away from the raps.  M.A.B.’s verse on here is a per­fect example of get­ting it ‘just right’, he per­fectly demon­strates the mix­ture of aggres­sion and mean­ing that plays such an integ­ral part through­out this record.

‘Light­en­ing Rod’ fol­lows as track 5 and although this track doesn’t stand out amongst the col­lec­tion it is still a bril­liant hip-hop track.  The col­lect­ive come togeth­er to deliv­er the hook and there’s a real sense of unity between the artists.  Track 6 ‘Open Book’ is a def­in­ite high­light.  The beat is sub­dued, allow­ing the vocals to take pre­ced­ence and some of the word­play and rhymes delivered here are pure genius.

Track 7 ‘Mis­fit’ is prob­ably the most aggress­ive song on the record.  It sits per­fectly as the pen­ul­tim­ate track demon­strat­ing how hard the MCs can go when they want to.  I would ima­gine this to be a high­light of any future live shows, the thump­ing beat will prob­ably lick the audi­ence a new heartbeat!

The EP closes with ‘Scratch­ing the Sur­face’ which con­tains some of the best word­play on the record accom­pan­ied by anoth­er old-skool-ish beat, only as com­plex as it needs to be there’s plenty of room for the three artists to show­case their tal­ents, again some of the rhymes and the vocal line rhythms are genius.

This EP is a bril­liant example of UK Hip-Hop at it’s best with all three MC’s show­cas­ing some extremely impress­ive tal­ent for both writ­ing and deliv­er­ing as well work­ing with­in a range of styles.  The pro­duc­tion on the record has also been handled superbly and deserves as much praise.  M.A.B, EdXL and Dili­gent Fin­gers look set to carry on cement­ing their places in the UK scene if they con­tin­ue to work this pro­duct­ively. Recom­men­ded to any Hip-Hop fan.

To Pre-order the E.P Vis­it http://diligentfingers.bandcamp.com/album/the-programme-ep

Have an exclus­ive listen to one of the tracks off The Pro­gramme E.P ‘Back Through The Ages’

Micky Roots

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Micky Roots

Micky roots is one of the edit­ors of I am hip hop magazine, a pure hip hop head and visu­al artist he brings his strong know­ledge of hip hop, social con­scious­ness & polit­ic­al con­cern to No Bounds.

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