[music] LATEEF & THE CHIEF - Maroons: Ambush (Quannum)

This may sound picky, but I hear a lot of people like Blackalicious enough to care, so bear with me.

First of all, it took me a whole month after hearing about this record before I wondered who "the Chief" was. Chief X-Cel from Blackalicious, duh. Okay.

That puts Ambush in competition not so much with Blackalicious or Latyrx (Lateef's other gig) as with The Gift Of Gab's solo album, this summer's 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up. And any way you look at it, Gab gets worked. Maybe this is a better record just because Lateef is a more talented guy to collaborate with than the no-name producers Gift Of Gab enlisted, but I don't think so. I'm not actually that into Lateef; he's fine, but there's no way he's going to elevate an album in my esteem much. X-Cel is clearly carrying the weight here. If Gab had done as good a job on Rocketships as his partner does on Ambush, it would have partially redeemed the rotten production. Didn't happen.

In some ways, Chief X-Cel's production sounds better with a less distinctive rapper. That's not to say Gift Of Gab needs his hand held; his guest appearance on a New Flesh single is the reason I started liking him, and his song (with Lateef!) on the Fela tribute that came out in 2002 was my favorite song of that year. And I still think Blackalicious are great, even if it now seems like when they're together, Gab hogs the stage a little and X-Cel is too modest.

Probably no song from this record will ever become dear to me. I'll just put it on for background as often as my self-image can handle the fact that I'm someone who puts on music for background.