Themselves — Crownsdown
The album sees Dose One & Jel going further towards an old school rap sound meets sort of quite a commercial yet still slightly edgy pop sound. There seems little of that creative & genre mixing that always made Themselves & the Anticon label so special, fresh & exiting; it just feels mostly safe, often predictable & a little empty too. There’s also a more straight forward less surrealistic based rap going on here too, sure Dose is often raping up a steam but it’s often just bland & macho boasting instead of the great & weird flights of fancy we’re normally get from Mr Ducker.
On the plus side if you take it for what it is, it’s an enjoyable if rather safe album that I can see appealing more to of your 'straight hip-hop & rap head'. The tracks are often memorable, well produced & as a more ‘straight’ hip- hop record it’s fine. I just miss the project truly creative & breath-taking spirit; sure there a few tracks here & there that hint or just about hit the spirit of ‘The No Music’ and later day Subtle stuff- but mostly it plays it safe.
With ‘Crownsdown’ Themselves seem to be trying to bring back interest of the hip-hop & rap scene who deserted them years ago for being too weird & out-there. Which is fine, but I just wish they’d had thrown in more ‘old school’ Anticon spirit too. So in summing another well produced & executed often tuneful album that just rather lacks surprise & creativity you'd expect from the project & the Anticon name/ lable