One Be Lo - s.o.n.o.g.r.a.m. By www.emcee-battle.com

I don't know why its taken me so long to review this album, because it's the kind that deserves the attention of everybody. Being his first solo-effort, I didn't know what to expect. When a lot of kats break away from their group to do a solo effort, it's normally a shaky attempt at making themselves be known as the illest. And in a lot of cases, it shines through that they're trying TOO hard to be heard over the rest of their group.

One Be Lo manages to avoid this, yet still sounds excellent and comes across as the strongest in Binary Star (which is weird). His rhymes seem inspired by a fusion of Nas, Ice Cube, KRS-One and others.

From the start, the soulful blend of beats (we'll discuss them more in a minute) and lyrics will have you feeling this. One Be Lo's delivery is really clear and powerful, and definitely one of the strongest underground heads at the moment, and a HUGE star for the future. This is the type of shit that SHOULD be on the radio. Back to the beats: Although strong in places, they aren't really that special. For an underground CD, they're good enough to be put into the strong category, but overall they won't impress the average mainstream head until the disk has been spun a couple of times and they become used to it.

However, I feel this works strongly in One Be Lo's favour, as it's up to him to carry the album with his lyrics and flow, and not vice-versa.

Impressively, One Be Lo covers an abundance of topics on - s.o.n.o.g.r.a.m., from love to hate, from bad to good. The 70+ minute length of this CD proves this, but it also proves that he maybe does it too long. He covers his topics well, and all the songs are on-point. But sometimes he re-use's a topic, and it doesn't come across as strong as his other attempt at it...making you feel it could have been left-out (you still won't skip the track, though).

This is a strong contender for Solo Album Of The Year, and for Best Album Of The Year, too ... its definitely one of my favourites along with The Minstrel Show.

web: www.onebelo.com

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