Review Summary: After two years of delay, The Marxman comes through with raps that kill pretenders and hangs with the Wu-Tang Crowd. One of the best rap albums of 2010 so far.
June Marx is the other half of underground rap group "Twin Perils". June Marx does all of the production on the Twin Perils albums and is the other half without the gruff voice(No disrespect to Lone Ninja). After a couple of years of being delayed, Marx is finally back with an album full of straight, lyrical, Wu-Tang-style rap. Marx, of course, handles all of the production on each of these 12 strong tracks and spits mad flows on each track.
Most of these tracks consist of an intro, two verses, and a chorus. Pretty standard formula for rap, but his production style and flow really bring you into the music. He has the lyrical skills of GZA and an oddly clean voice for his style. Most of his raps are "boasting" raps where he boasts about his militaristic rhyme skills and beating people to a pulp. June mostly focuses on using complex wordplay and mid-paced rapping to draw you in to effect. And it works surprisingly well. The production on Body of God at first sounds like RZA rip-off beats but its actually deeper than that. he layers piano, hard-hitting drums, swirling synthy effects and usually some kind of sitar, or Japanese instrument into one pounding beat after another. Also, most of the songs are layered with samples of war movies. It suits Marx's style perfectly.
Like i said earlier, Marx mostly spits lyrical raps. However, one of the songs near the end, is a semi-love song. On "Season Of Lust" Marx raps about wanting to be with women but he has to focus on touring and recording music. It's really something different in this style of Rap. Their are also a couple guest verses on here. Lone Ninja guests on
Hadron Collider with one of his strongest verses ever. He really brings himself into his own here. Rapper Godilla(Check out his "Jaguar Paw" album), guests on
Silence The Traitors where he spits in an almost, Freeway-esque style. His voice is gruff like Freeways but is lyrical style is different. He Absolutely kills the track> June Marx, however is the real focus here.
This album is truly a great hip-hop release. Granted, it doesn't have anything radio-worthy so it won't appeal to any mainstream rap fans and some may find Marx's style boring. Overall though, if you don't check this out, you're missing out one of the best rap albums of 2010. June Marx creates 12 tracks of devastating flows and lyrics and proves himself a competent rapper.
4/5
