Music: edIT, "Certified Air Raid Material"

Its somewhat ironic that I found this album when a couple of my roomates were playing an NBA game, considering how much the NBA and rap/hip hop music are intertwined nowadays. You can ask anyone I know about what kind of music I listen to and its a near guarantee that the first words through their mouths would NEVER be "rap" or "hip hop". You'll usually find me listening to everything from solo guitarists like Andy McKee or Antione Dufour all the way to the other end of the spectrum with metal by Turisas.

My major problem with rappers is I think that the focus is a bit too much just on them. At least in bands or with electronica you know exactly who to give the credit for creating the music, but rappers for the most part (MOST PART, not everyone because there really are a handful of rappers out there who are immensely talented) are known just for writing the lyrics, which are absolutely nothing without a good beat behind them. Those that make the beats, though, remain primarily uncredited to the public. edIT is the type of guy who would make those beats, he just takes it a few...ok, a few dozen steps further.

"Certified Air Raid Material" randomly showed up on my "Just For You" section of iTunes, so I decided to take a bit of a look at a few of the more popular songs by edIT. I was immediately taken in by his music, which has a vivid hip hop feel to it, but many of the songs have no lyrics to them. They are simply intricately detailed beats and mixes that could be rapped to, but are really meant to get one's blood pumping. The amount of detail placed into each individual track rivals some entire albums that were released this past year.

This album really pays attention to the mixing, so in a sense one could argue that it IS an electronic album (thats at least what genre iTunes puts it under, but they get it wrong quite a bit in my book), but have anyone listen to the second track "Battling Go-Go Yubari in Downtown L.A." and the first thing that comes to mind is hip hop. I really am at a loss of words when trying to explain what the songs are like to listen to; it just has to be experienced. Its easy with a group like "Daft Punk" to explain songs because they use an immense amount of repetition, but the songs in "Air Raid Material" change up so often that everything is always fresh and now.

Score: 8.8 out of 10. I simply cant put into words what this album is like, but i CAN say that it is very, VERY good, and this is coming from someone who doesn't have a particular taste for music of this genre. If this is the direction that hip hop is going in and his this type of talent on the rise, you have one more very interested listener.