Dilated Peoples - Expansion Team

With hip-hop today in state of complete disarray, it's nice to find album's like Dilated Peoples "Expansion Team". DJ Babu with the help of Beat Minerz, Alchemist, and DJ Premiere, among others laid the foundation for Evidence, Rakaa, and guests to put down some of the freshest rhymes and verses I've heard in awhile. From the first track, 'Live On Stage', you know Dilated Peoples don't come soft. I mean this isn't that crappy gangsta rap, it's just hip-hop in its truest form; a kick ass DJ and two talented MCs. While you may have heard similar albums from Jurassic 5, The Roots, and The Alkaholics, Dilated isn't just another "underground" clone. Spend some time with this album and you'll realize the orchestration of the samples, scratches, and verses throughout this collection of tracks. I'd have to say the formula on this album was perfected on the tracks 'Clockwork', 'Proper Propaganda', and 'Panic', however every track offers something that the others don't. Dilated Peoples also play with some abstract arrangements with their interludes on this album, especially in the 'Phil Da Agony Interlude' (possibly my favorite track of the CD). Overall, this CD brings hip-hop to another plateau and it's up to the next group to take it higher, but they have to compete with Dilated for the crown now. I would like to see some more experimentation and tracks that tackle the ideas developed in the interludes on the album, so I can't give the album a "brilliant" score, but this album definitely deserves every bit of 4.0 manstyle points. [www.dilatedpeoples.com]