6

7.2

UK release date 12.07.2007

A native of Roxbury, Massachusetts, ‘Radio’ Raheem Jamal has put in work with both Project Move and Electric Company. His solo debut, produced entirely by Raydar Ellis, is a worthy effort concerned with relationships, the state of the world and daily life on the block. Raydar’s soul-centred beats are never less than decent, but neither do they particularly bang or boom. As such, the album lends itself to pleasant, jazz-funk afternoon listening in the main, a chocolate-coated health bar of an album rather than a full meal.

Raheem fancies himself as a “hopeless, romantic truth-seeker”, and some of his major preoccupations for the first half of the album are semi-successful encounters with the opposite sex, the frustrations of uneventfully stoned days and the ups-and-downs of getting by in Boston. When later on he does get himself fired-up into a bit of good old-fashioned bragging and mic-rocking, as on ‘The Thang’, things get a fair bit more interesting, though Raydar Ellis would have done well to get a DJ involved to develop on his somewhat exuberant horns. ‘Live It Up’ is similarly upbeat, burning some conga fuel to kinetic effect, but again seems to lose impetus three minutes in.

The overall effect is of honest, intelligent rhymes over consistently proficient beats, and of wholesome, if not life-changingly necessary, backpackery.
Words Ewan Hurzami