Customer Reviews

The Spirit Of Apollo

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Seriously. I read Pitchfork's 1.6 review of this album. pppbbttthhhhh! There's so many guests on here that there's NO WAY that they're all going to stick out. People who score this low only seem to have done so because they were expecting tooo much. I love this album. The beats are AT LEAST solid (if not Timbaland or Dilla-quality), the guests are wide-ranging and did anyone else read about how it took them 4 years to get this album done? or how they got 5 different artists to come up with 5 different covers?

I saw this clip of Louie C.K. on Conan O' Brian (sp?) talking about how everything's amazing and no one's happy! This is a perfect example of the "most spoiled generation" not appreciating what they have. Before everyone was downloading music back in the early 00's, this would have been out of stock regularly at most independent record stores (remember those, kids?).

Let's start with track 1 and move down. Intro, good. 2 tracks with David Byrne and some other people, gets it off to a good "let's stop worrying about who has what and get into the music". The next two tracks have guest spots from Wu-Tang members and some other reliable members of the hip-hop community. Ohhh, wow... there's so many guest on here, but I noticed that some of them guest on tracks that follow the other one they guested on - that's called establishing a sense of con-tin-u-it-y and on proper albums (remember those?), it's a plus.

The good news is that there's hope for you yet - I used to be you. I had this amazing collection of independent hip-hop and sold quite a lot of it. After I moved out of my cynicism and attitude that it had to be unique and groundbreaking to be any good, I realized that it's freaking hard to come up with consistent beats (like this one) and book guests like they did and the fact that they persevered through 4 years means that $7.99 is the least you could part with for this album, you stingy b@st@rds ;)

p.s. I was going to give it 5 stars, but it just came out a couple of weeks ago and there's so much other stuff coming as well.

*takes cane off the wall and walks down to the corner store to get some more hard candy for the grandkids*

Ignore what some review sites say(like Pitchfork), this CD is awesome. The amount of great artists crammed onto this CD is awesome. Admittedly some of the tracks aren't that great but they can't overshadow the brilliance of this record. This CD will make those who do not ordinarily like hip hop, R&B, and rap into converts. The Spirit Of Apollo shows us all how great music can be if artists don't make songs so that they'll be #1 hits and played constantly on the radio. This is pure expression distilled into great beats and lyrics. Don't hesitate to buy it. This is a truly special album.

The best thing I can say about this album is that its not quite as good as Dan the Automator's Handsome Boy Modeling School. Its very similar in format. DJ makes the beats gets some of the best hip hop artists around combine's it with Some of the most unique rock artists (NASA has David Byrne, Tom Waits and John Frusciante, Dan The Automator has Mike Patton, The Mars Volta, and Jack Johnson) and what you get is a very unique collection of music. Don't buy the album if you are looking for great DJ's but if you look at the list of contributors and see a bunch of artist you like then definitely buy this album. It is primarily a hip hop album with the likes of Method Man, RZA, KRS One, ODB, Kool Keith, Del, and many more. Check out tracks 3. Money and 8. Strange Enough. Peace!

Okay - I don't give 5 stars as melodic perfection will only be truly heard when I enter the heavenly realms...but..this is addictive.

So much variation, so many ridiculous but beautifully blended collaborations - hardly conceivable that this would work but it does.

Now, I like David Byrne, I'm pretty keen on Kanye West & Tom Waits and George Clinton are legends - throw them all together with new ground breaking artistes like Santogold and some fantastic beats and melodies and I find myself unable to turn the thing off.

Try and pick a favourite track, I challenge you!

Just buy it.

This is the first cd I bought this year after reading an article in a national newspaper. The chemistry between then is undeniable and the collabos r great, all of them fits perfectly.On the other hand there's a couple of beats that didn't sound good but overall it's an interesting project plus the art cover is really beautiful.

I loved it. It does a fair amount of experimentation but is still accessible and a lot of fun.

When I first heard the amount of artists involved in this project, I was both wary and intrigued. Then I heard the song with Kanye, Santogold, and Lykkie Li, and I started to get excited. Unfortunately, a lot of the album feels like an attempt at a throwback to the production of indie hip hop in the late '90s/ early '00s, which was more or less a throwback to a lot of the production in the early '90s. So what we've been given is a derivative of a derivative. It feels like N.A.S.A. were so impressed with themselves for putting effort towards this global, no-walls project that they forgot to apply a lot of polish or necessary innovation to make this effective. For me, the most interesting track is the horn-heavy instrumental that closes the album (if you ignore the unnecessary secret song), so maybe if this project featured a fraction of the guests involved, it would've felt focused. A lack of strong performances is not the issue. This muddling, foggy affair gets boring much quicker than everybody promised.

This is my "CD of the year" so far; it's a first rate collection of artists ranging from David Byrne to Tom Waits to Kool Keith to George Clinton to Santogold to M.I.A. ...

All of them expressing the spirit of the age. One race, one human, funkin' race!! The rhythms start with the heart and move out from there.

Get WITH this album.

This is exactly the kind of hipster indie/hip-hop cross-genre monster that it looks like. It has a lot of good names and seems like it could be great. It even sustains a bit of excitement as one awaits the high concept pairing of Kool Keith and Tom Waits.

Then you realize it's an unremarkable, though not bad, hip-hop pastiche organized by a couple of guys with stellar access, a bit of vision, and no great amount of ability. Beats most pop hip-hop, but is not anywhere near the alternative masterpiece its originators thought it to be.

Divid Byrne is on a lot of these, isn't he? Is that a set-aside?