Hands On [EXPLICIT LYRICS]

After the brief intro, `Eddy Senay's' 70's horn laded "Down Home", is something straight off a Shadow/Cut Chemist live mix tape, slow groove gives way to blaxploitation funk, it all moves in an agreeably slow hod nodding fashion, and starts and it means to go on. "Organized Konfusion's - "Fudge Funk" is a tightly woven piece of celebratory funk that ups the tempo and sounds vaguely familiar (undoubtedly sampled by other songs, for its superb piano/bass line). The relatively sedate pace of this mix album begins to gather steam here, and sounds reminiscent of `Funkadelic's' best work, those with an appreciation of funk, will revel in Nu-Mark's considerable years of obscure musical crate digging, that are so obviously on display here.

The introduction of smooth, old school referencing Hip-Hop is handled expertly, with several skits beautifully illustrating the change over from strong crossover funk, to intelligent hip-hop, before the track proper (the Nu-Mark produced "Chali 2na Comin' Thru"), with Jurassic 5 band member `Chali 2na', laying down tongue twisting rhymes & lyrical consciousness, for progressive rap, that the Jurassic crew are famed for, in fact such is the similarity of this track to Jurassic 5's carefree, freelwheeling old school rap, that this track could have been lifted from any Jurassic album, such is it's quality.

"MF Doom" (under the alias "Viktor Vaughn"), hardens the Hip-Hop edge with a more contemporary Jazz-fused track with his impressionistic rhyme trails, and dazzlingly inventive lyrical flow, this although more confrontational, then the previous tracks, doesn't lose it's consistency throughout the mix as Nu-mark is skilfully able to reign in the track, before it has any chance to disrupt the flow of the album. Nu-mark even drops a little foreign language number in amongst all this with the, "Key Kool - Hands on" track that gives the album a little extra flavour & fleshes out the album, and is a excellently produced track in its own right, that more than justifies its inclusion on this album by laying down a strong beat foundation, for which the foreign rapper effortlessly freestyles over , and rather than filling the latter half of the album with obscure European tracks, Nu-Mark has wisely kept such tracks to a bare minimum, and feels more like a broadening of music styles, and shows that other countries of obviously listening closely to how American Hip-hop/Rap, has come on leaps and bounds of the last few years.

As this album appears to be an all-encompassing mix, the rhythmic drum compositions of "Barry morgan" and the Percussion of "Ray Cooper" close out the latter part of the album, with the wonderfully percussion/Drum instrumental of their "Impulsion" track will possibly leave a few listeners scratching their heads, with it's inclusion, but the fact remains, that it's a fantastically composed track that is bongo influenced jazz-style drumming that given the transition throughout the album, (funk/Hip-Hop), is quite staggering as to how Nu-mark has made the seamless crossover through the various styles.

Those looking to buy this album, should be warned that, this album is anything but a furious mixtape style workout, that replicates Nu-Mark/Cut Chemist's live performances. Instead this is purely suited to home listening, with the emphasis on a (Relatively) diverse set of music, its just as influenced by `Funk', as it is by `Hip-Hop', choosing to slow the tempo down, and focus instead on beat heavy, Chopped up tracks & instrumental groove, that are as much a part of 70's funk music, as is the implementation of funky Hip-Hop or intelligent Rap. Not a album that will immediately bowl you over with its prowess, instead this is one of those albums that greatly impress with subsequent listens, and It truly makes fantastic background music. And has a substantial longevity lacking in a lot of mix albums.....highly recommended.

If you understand how he makes Jurassic 5's beats, this is the stuff where it comes from, which makes it even better.