3 out of 5

Label: Rhymesayers

Produced by: Various

The first Lice outing was an awesome surprise: a collabo that was more than the some of its parts – not a small claim, when those parts are Aes and Homeboy Sandman! – even if its relatively light-hearted vibe had it something moderately like a lark. Lice 2 sort of retroactively made it not a lark, and turned the duo into what felt like the most natural pairing in the world, turning in an all-time EP. Lice 3, while still bearing the high-quality hallmark of both our rappers, is the first of these things to feel rather like odds and ends; like each emcee is guesting on another’s track. It has a moderate been-there-done-that vibe, with none of the songs necessarily achieving the highs of previous ones, though opener Pins and Needles aggressiveness gets us close, with the bouncy Pizza and Burgers comes in close second.

Perhaps it’s the production: the Lice shtick of having a different handler for each track deals out some collectively similar-sounding beats this time around, and a bit less dense / more repetitive than what came before – Qulle Chris’ work on Yoohoo probably the greatest offender there, which leads Aesop and Homeboy to deliver some fairly average (for the duo) wordplay as a possible result.

Of course, on an album, these tracks would be plenty fine, held up by other material, but narrowed down to this EP, there’s no such buffer.

Lice is still a project I’ll look forward to, should we get another entry, and perhaps it was just luck of the draw that we’d get an average set at some point. The standout tracks make this worth a listen, but it’s good we had the previous two Lice releases to sell us on this pairing first.