Customer Reviews

Esoteric vs. Japan

5 star:		(4)
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I bought this a while ago and it has never left the rotation of CDs in my car... Everyone I've introduced this album to went out and bought it within a week of hearing some of it... This is something special, ladies and gentlemen. MC Esoteric delivered a pure work of genius from start to finish. A unified work with very few guest spots and includes even a few instrumental interludes of sort that showcase Esoteric's beat-making skills are as rich and as complex as his verbal delivery.

The impact of anime and Asian cinema on hip hop - particularly underground hip hop - is profound, and MC Esoteric takes it to a whole new level on Pterodactyl Takes Tokyo. Filled with samples and clips from classic cartoons like Shogun Warriors, Esoteric unapologetically delivers a fusion of boom bap hip hop with 1980s-era Japanese pop culture. The result is part Ghostface Killah-caliber devotion to saturday morning cartoons and breakfast cereals of his childhood, and part Quentin Tarantino film or even better, Shinichiro Watanabe's genre-busting hip hop samurai jidaigeki anime series Samurai Champloo. Esoteric shows a deep cultural literacy that transcends both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

Outside of the dazzling array of references to Marvel Comics characters or Toei monster movies, Esoteric also manages to lay his soul bare. His unhealed wounds over the passing of his dog Logan sounds loud and clear when he raps on "Gigantor Says Anything" - "Me and Logan trek through the thickest mud // 'A Boy And His Dog,' that's word to Vic and Blood // Lost the last one, yeah your man cried // Saw 'I Am Legend,' walked out when Sam died." Heartfelt and hilarious!

I cannot recommend this album enough. Five stars does not do it justice. This is easily one of the finest rap albums of the last decade, if not all time. In the tradition of other great underground albums like Dan the Automator and Del's Deltron 3030, J Dilla and Madlib's Jaylib, and Dr. Octagon.

I bought this album around the time it originally dropped and have been listening to it since. I been a fan of 7L and Esoteric for a while now and this has got to be the best stuff I've heard come from Esoteric! I love when artists try different concepts and push the creative envelope, and Eso does that here. Being a fan of stuff like anime, comics, sci-fi, etc., I can really get into how Eso gets creative with the samples from various Japanese shows & films (there's even a sample from an old Godzilla commercial I remember from my childhood!) and made it hip hop.

Favorite tracks:

Real Rap Design
Mecha Mecha
God Less America
Knifegirl
Demoralizer
I Do Lo-Fi

Wow, I'm not sure where to start. I've been meaning to write a review since I got this cd early this last summer. This is my favorite album so far this year. I have been a fan of 7L & Esoteric since Dangerous Connection and have seen them evolve as artists. This album is SO creative and different then anything I've heard. To be honest, it's been tough finding good hip hop lately. Once I heard this, I was able to exhale and not worry so much that the whole industry is falling off. My favorite tracks are Neo-Tokyo (Main Flow verse is insane), Wrestlelectro, Real Rap Design, & Gigantor Says Anything...but I truly like them all. Esoteric is a sampling beast on this album. Thanks for putting this out and switching it up in an industry of bland, predictable, fakeness...it's refreshing.

I recently bought this album at amoeba's in sf, and will continue to buy anything with Esoteric's name on it. This has a very unique sound to it, and each track adds something to the cd. You can listen to this all the way through, over and over. My favorite song is Neo-Tokyo with Main Flow.