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Listen, On the Download

E Major Is Still Better Than Yours

April 22, 2011
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E Major’s Majority Rules snuck in right before the dying days of simple, direct, soul-beat-based hip-hop. By ’08 or so, even the stalwart “underground” began to reconstruct itself and experiment just a bit. And E did it better than a lot of other dudes, with the club-tinged experimental single “Paper Runnin” and last year’s Major Major Mixtape which found go-go experiments bumping heads with slightly off-the-wall freestyles.

He’s been, like so many others, a searching, wandering, really interesting rapper, but nothing’s really lived up to Majority Rules until now. E Major Is . . . Better Than Yours boldly realigns E’s aesthetic. He’s still making sample-based, contemplative rap, but the production’s a bit more woozy (“FTW,” a freestyle over Flying Lotus’ “Massage Situation”) and there are strange tracks like the Peter Gabriel-sampling “The Shape of Things” and just in general, a laid-back, magic-hour feeling to the whole thing. The best track though, is a break-up song and an ode to getting older and being less of a dumbass called “Therapy.” It samples a John Lennon interview and Jerry Butler’s “Make It Easy On Yourself.” You can download E Major Is . . . Better Than Yours here.

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