Buzrk - Where You Rather Be

Hear The Track Here

Showing only too well that first impressions count, I watched the approach of this track with some trepidation. I reviewed Bzurk's One Last To Arms (September 2007) and wasn't best pleased. There again, when the way you make music is to beg/steal/buy or borrow the beats you use and then rap over the top of them, your choices have to be limited. I think my main gripe about that track was the same gripe I level at a certain of online (ie unsigned) hip hop artists. Having a raw sound is all well and good, but then there is a point where it will affect the listener too and that isn't affect in a good way. The truth is that hip hop (and in a wider sense R&b) is the major musical trend for many years now and not everyone is going to be the dogs danglys.

And not everybody is going to like it.

It's best then, if you were a hip hop artist, to have something different to offer. On that score, even though Buzrk proves to be a competent rapper on both tracks I have heard, he is going to have to up his game quite a bit to make any serious headway. Because - I imagine - of his recording difficulties the raps are pretty much flat with little in the way of production or tweaking to make the vocals cut through better. One of the things he would do well to pay a bit more attention to is somehow treating his vocals to a little more EQ, reverb and the like. There again, if you haven't got the kit, you haven't got the kit and what comes out comes out. That is what a lot of this track sounds like to me, and I don't mean that in as bad a way as it sounds.

The original music track here comes from Beat Basement and excellent it is too. A great selection of instruments and a neat arrangement and you couldn't want better for 'store bought beats' that's for sure. Buzrk doesn't make the same mistake this time with the volume levels and the rap mostly lays on the track as it should. After all that is said and done, it's going to come down to a question of whether you would like this rappers style or not. Like a great many of them, I can see he has determination and willingness but it takes more than that to break a crowd as cynical as the one on Soundclick. For my part I liked the music very much but didn't feel the same about the rap, partly because of that underproduced sound I mentioned.