Xrabit & DMG$ // Hello World

As a massive fan of hip-hop I was really excited when asked to review ‘Hello World’. I slid it into the CD player and waited for the familiar feeling of the first track to start. I was met with the cool lyrics of "Damaged Goods” which has a beat you’ll find on a lot of recent hip hop but with very tight rapping harking back to the classic artists of old. The trio are obviously confident enough in the strength of their lyrics to make them easily accessible. Or so I thought until the heavy bassline of "Ferris Bueller” was replaced by pretty uninspiring lyrics disguised as an outward look at the ‘too-cool’ hip hop world. Unfortunately, Xrabit & DMG$ seem to have fallen into the same trap as they preach about their home state of Texas, not dissimilar to the very artists they are attacking. Fortunately, there are a couple of good songs on this album, ‘Salt Shaker’ and 'Follow the Leader’ are both head bobbers but this has got to be attributed to the bass heavy backing tracks all the way through, which kept me interested even when the lyrics didn’t. Despite the assertion that you won’t have heard anything like this album before, it doesn’t seem like the artists have tried hard enough to either make ‘Hello World’ different, or to make it better than the norm. This is not a bad album, it just isn’t a good one and whilst if you just like your beats, it’s definitely listenable, I’m afraid I demand rather more from my hip-hop.