Review Summary: While it has its flaws, Burnt sector is an outstanding debut effort from the assassin known as the Lone Ninja
The Lone Ninja. One of the most underground names in hip-hop and rap music makes his first full length album, Burnt Sector. Released in late 2009, this record still gets plays in my music library today. This record has its astounding parts and its weak parts. Basically, Lone Ninja is a love-him-or-hate-him artist.
This album is wonderful musically. The production (courtesy of Lord Gamma) is raw, stripped down, yet so thick and layered at the same time. Cuts like hazardous duty and feudal Japan have layers of instrumentation upon them and hazardous duty in particular, has pitched changed soul vocals as part of the music. The music sounds very traditionally Asian mixed in with a post-modern hip-hop sound. All the tracks have some sort of sitar on them and a lot of Japanese melodies are played here. Also, did I mention that every song has samples of old samurai/ninja films and documentaries?. Basically, Lord Gamma is an outstanding producer and does a phenomenal job here and could show off some more skills on later releases.
Now, the actual rapping of Lone Ninja is where the love it or hate it comes in. The man has a voice similar to DOOMs and has lyrics about ninjas, warfare, assassination tactics, weaponry, and more implying that he is a modern day ninja. His voice is monotone and thick but the ninja can flow and rhyme with any of the best underground rappers out there today. The ninjas speed can change from a super fast lyrical strike to a stealthy slow drawl. The man’s rapping is quite incredible to some and average to others. The problems however is that sometimes the music and the rapping doesn’t fit well on some tracks and if you don’t have the time to pay attention you can get bored easily.
Good {+}
+Lyricism
+flow and rapping
+killer guest spots
+amazing production
Bad {-}
-The rapping (as much a curse as it is a blessing)
- Music can clash with vocals and sound like complete chaos
- Could have used more tracks
http://www.myspace.com/lone_ninja
