Strong Arm Steady – Deep Hearted (Review)

Over a year ago, blogger god (bloggod?) Noz pointed out how up-and-coming solo MCs appear less and less willing to go the group route to establish themselves, and everybody wants to jump ahead and be the next somebody, or the first themselves. A year later, and it’s the same shit, different toilet. For every unsigned MC who’s trying to grind his way (nh) to a record contract, there’s a signed MC who has a finished album collecting dust because their label doesn’t know how to market them, be they a part-time HBO star whose waited over 12 months for a sample to clear, or the next big thing out of N.Y. whose lead single has a Snoop Dogg feature. [Were those blatant enough for you? To answer my own question, yes. And I’m not trying to hate either, just stating facts.]

Strong Arm Steady’s Deep Hearted serves as an experiment in this forgotten path to hip hop respectability. SAS (and I’m not talking about those British dudes in DipSet) have been a topic of discussion at ML for a little while now, and with the release of their debut LP this week on Nature Sounds, they take their next step in advancing their movement that has been many years, and many mixtapes, in the making.

Phil The Agony, Krondon (who handles many of the hooks on here) and Mitchy Slick have unique enough styles to compliment each other well — Slick’s smooth flow is the most accessible, Krondon’s scratchy voice is the roughest-sounding, and Agony’s delivery is the most dramatic. The computerized-sounding DJ Khalil-produced “Wreckless Words” features all 3 MCs at the top of their respective games, and is one of a select few tracks on the album that actually features the trio all together. With the album’s overstacked guest list, each MC has fewer verses to themselves than you’d expect on a typical group album — however, since most of the tracks feature only 1 or 2 members of the group (like the banging lead single, “One Step”, which replaces Slick’s spot in the line-up with Talib Kweli), each MC is given equal opportunity to be heard.

The production on Deep Hearted ranges from hard-hitting, pulsating beats (“The Movement” featuring Planet Asia and “You Ain’t Me” featuring Xzibit, Ras Kass & Chamillionaire, which get the album off to an energetic start) to more low-key selections with a laid-back, summertime-type vibe (the Evidence-produced “Streetlights” featuring Talib Kweli). The West Coast influence in the production is prevalent throughout (most notably on “Bloody Money” featuring Pop ‘n’ Bullets & Jelly Roll), but there are points where SAS branch out to better suit their guests, such as on the Southern bounce track “Dirty Dirty” featuring Juvenile (which serves as an odd choice to end the album), and the Madlib-produced “Clean Up” featuring Toronto’s Saukrates and Illadelph’s Black Thought, which is some soulful, chopped-up-sample goodness, much in line with Mad’s contributions to Kweli’s latest work (still my favorite album of the year, with or without a Justin Timberlake bonus track).

Deep Hearted‘s flaws do not really impede on the musical quality of the album — the biggest issue would depend on whether or not you can withstand Krondon’s occasional attempts at falsetto. Aside from that, there are moments where the album comes across less as a Strong Arm Steady LP, and more as a compilation starring Strong Arm Steady. [If this was the intention of Deep Hearted, then I clearly missed that point.] The DJ Babu-produced “Co-Operation” features Dilated Peoples, but comes off more like a Dilated track featuring Mitchy Slick (and Krondon on the hook). Likewise, the aforementioned “You Ain’t Me” would have been more fitting on a Chamillionaire album or mixtape — the only SAS-contribution to the track is a short bridge at the beginning and end of the song by (who else but…) Krondon.

Regardless, being relative newcomers to the album-buying public (though both 50 Cent and The Game drop shoutouts at points in the album, you’d be foolish to think that the majority of their fans know much about SAS), the benefits of having your name attached to an album that is as raw and consistently-dope as Deep Hearted would likely be greater than dropping solo albums with little name recognition. Time will tell if that’ll be the case for Strong Arm Steady, but they’re off to a good start.

Download: Strong Arm Steady – “One Step” featuring Talib Kweli

Download: Strong Arm Steady – “On The Grind” [NOTE: Beware of promo drops!]