connected and respected e40 album mp3 free download

There’s a revealing contrast to be found in the work of SOB X RBE: A similarly restricted sound feels more exciting in the hands of the hellions from Vallejo’s Country Club Crest, probably because they’re young and rap like their shoes are on fire. When they’re engaged, the album’s washed-out palette plays as menace rather than exhaustion. This seems less the fault of the producers than it does E-40 and B-Legit.

Despite its array of respected Bay Area producers-most notably P-Lo, Traxamillion, and the Mekanix-there’s an off-putting uniformity to the album, which is stuck in a gray zone that’s either post- Mobb Music or post- Mustard, depending on your historical perspective. What feels wrong, though, is the limited range of Connected and Respected. The wizened, slightly dyspeptic storytelling of “Life Lessons,” “Up Against It,” “Barbershop,” and Click reunion cut “Blame It” would have been out of character 20 years ago but, with both rappers nearing or at their fifties, their transition into elder statesmen feels right. When their hard-bitten bad cop-bad cop routine works, it works well. They now share an age-appropriate world-weariness, and the lightheartedness that marked classics like their (and Mac Shawn’s) “Sideways” and the Click’s “Hurricane” is largely absent. On Connected and Respected, that calculus has been altered. E-40 was the gun that shot a BANG! flag B-Legit was the jet-black truncheon in a dark alleyway.

Historically, B-Legit, with his deep, plainspoken lilt, has played the straight man to E-40’s antic, vibrating energy. He remains a gifted rapper and a witty lyricist, but he’s human-and, for E-40, that wasn’t always the case.įortunately, he and B-Legit (whose own Tryin’ to Get a Buck and The Hemp Museum are critically underappreciated) have a chemistry forged by time and consanguinity. Either the ravages of age or an understandable ebbing of interest has turned his voice, once volcanic, into something more viscous. But thirty years of rapping has dulled his powers. He was a thrilling listen: a line’s meter and syllables had little bearing on those of the next, so every verse had a breathless, acrobatic quality. At his peak, E-40’s verses ebbed and flowed like Napa River tides and had the carefree, unencumbered sway of a Hillside sideshow. E-40 wasn’t the first Bay Area rapper (that was probably Motorcycle Mike) and he wasn’t its first homegrown star (that was Too $hort), but the slang maven with the quicksilver voice is its arch-stylist.

Connected and respected e40 album mp3 free download