Sunday, March 08, 2009

Buzrk - Flame Roasted Com Version

Hear The Track Here

Miami, Florida based rapper Buzrk and I have had a bit of an up and down relationship ever since I first reviewed his One Last Call To Arms (September 2007). Like a lot of indie-rappers, Buzrk is going to be an acquired taste and obviously nowhere at all if you have no liking for the rap/hiphop genre. I do, despite its often profane-for-the-sake-of-it, misogynistic and violent worldview. The one area of the genre I don't particularly like is the sugary, semi-ballad style that IMO degrades the whole evolution of the style. Buzrk's had a couple of decent reviews from me in the past, but the overwhelming majority of the comments centre on the way Buzrk raps and sounds - as I say an acquired taste and one which I have yet to fully feel.

Still, there's always the next one...

There are a couple of Flame Roast versions on the webpage, even though they appear to use the same rap and - being a right nosy git - I had to listen to the other version first, which I did as I was downloading this version. I am soooo glad that I didn't have to review that version because - to be brutally honest - I turned it off before I was even a minute into it. Thankfully, the errors that marred the DM version are not ALL present in the Com version, although one of them certainly is. One of the major things that always colour my opinion of this artists work is actually something he can do nothing about, as unfair as that sounds. I just can't get close to the tone Buzrk raps in, and he - poor guy - can do absolutely nothing about that. That's one of the reasons I've been banging on the 'acquired taste' drum all the way through this riff. The other reason is because Buzrk, as a lyricist, tends to be more wordy than your average rapper.

I've always had problems sorting out what's going on lyrically because of the reasons stated above but this time - bless him - Buzrk has supplied the lyrical content along with the track and that makes things much easier. Music this time is a loop track from Deadly Melody Entertainment which is actually quite good although, obviously, repetitive to a fault. Buzrk doesn't write songs per se, his lyrical style is actually quite linear and when allied with such a repetitive backing track can seem a lot longer than its stated three minutes. I found it helps enormously to read along with the lyrics to get the drift but that also showed me the basic straight line delivery in probably its worst light.

Certainly I've heard this rapper do better work but if you like his style, this won't be a hardship to suck up.

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