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Battlestar
America:
Above Market Value
Above Market Value is a well-produced album that is part Hip-Hop, part Country. The songs are decently catchy, but ultimately the message they are attempting to get across bogs down the songs. These guys (or rather, this guy) firmly stands behind his beliefs, even going so far as to give them a large portion of the insert. While I respect that, I think it ultimately hurts the songs. Rhymes about stock prices, paychecks, voting, politics all of it just gets old quickly. That being said, a few of the tracks stray from these ideas, most notably "Love in This World." Veronica Dougherty sings a nice duet with Rench, that is catchy and, well, country. It actually reminds me a lot of Beck. The Country Hip-Hop combo comes off as pretty cool at first, but at points on the album, it's just hilarious. When a sample is going on at the same time as a banjo and turntable, it can be difficult not to crack a smile. Nevertheless, Rench does do a good job of blending it all together as well as Country and Hip Hop can be blended of course. I don't know much about Hip-Hop, so Im not the expert on what's good and what's not. I will say that some of the rhymes are whack, and some of them are awesome. I don't know where Rench stands on the Hip-Hop scale, but the album wasn't laughable, and that's about the best compliment I can give.
Overall, I am not a converted fan of Hip-Hop/Country fusion,
but I can see how people could start to get into this. And since I don't know
of any other Hip-Hop Country bands, I guess Battlestar
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