Selling Live Water

Like most Anticon records, Sole's Selling Live Water plays a disingenuous trick on the listener by selling itself as high-concept when it's really hip-hop Dada. For all its dense, breathless wordplay and thick, stewy production, you'd be forgiven for thinking that there's a surfeit of content here, threads to untangle, layers to peel through. The disappointing reality is that all these five-dollar words and murky sonic tapestries are impressionistic at best, a fact that wouldn't be in the least bit troubling were Sole's more lucid moments not filled with blazing rhetoric in deference to some sort of hidden insight. But even for this and all other errors of judgment (whereby he parses "flow" as "syllable count" and "surrealism" as "automatic writing"), there are some worthy moments to be had here. Selling Live Water's best trick is one of momentum, whereby a track starts at comatose speed and is shocked to life with a stronger beat halfway through ("Slow, Cold Drops"). Likewise, the otherwise pedestrian "Shoot the Messenger" is made magical by a hypnotic horn sample, which enfolds the track like a slow-motion lariat. In the end, though, Selling Live Water follows the Anticon party line (double-timed, singsongy half-sensical ramblings countering slow, lumbering beats) through to conscious hip-hop's most logical dead end. An irony, given that in order to move forward, Sole first needs to write his consciousness back into the script. ~ Mark Pytlik, Rovi

View More In Rap & Hip-Hop.

Or Browse Our Catalog.

Arena rockers Korn return to the intimate Hammerstein Ballroom to launch their new record "See You On The Other Side" for a group of their closest fans. Live On The Other Side brings you an up-front all-access pass to Korn from the first chord to the...

Half sorry, half party--crunk gets real!...

2010 live album from original Wu-Tang member Masta Killa, the first live effort from the group in over five years. Live culls together some of the best verses the versatile rapper has offered in his 17 year career, ranging from his 2004 solo debut No...

The tracks are: 1. Smooth/Dame Tu Amor (Feat, Rob Thomas), 2. Black Magic Woman, 3. Oye como Va, 4. Maria Maria (Feat, The Product G&B), 5. The Game Of Love (Feat, Michelle Branch), 6. Europa, 7. Soul Sacrifice....

Hang on to your seats and prepare yourself for the live experience that is STEVE OLIVER. His jubilant, growing legacy continues in 2008 with the release of his first ever DVD/CD 2 disk set, One Night Live Performing an incredible 200 dates a year, th...

Live from Philadelphia which is consists of mainly songs from Legend's two studio albums (2004's Grammy-winning Get Lifted and 2006's Once Again), is a high quality, well-produced release that further cements Legend's well-deserved reputation as ...

Clean Version. Helmed by noted director Blue Leach (R.E.M., Depeche Mode, Snow Patrol, Beck), Road To Revolution, Live At Milton Keynes captures Linkin Park on its acclaimed 2008 Projekt Revolution tour in front of 65,000 fans in England. The band's...

Vanilla Ice ~ Extremely Live...