3 out of 5

Label: Rhymesayers

Produced by: Jake One, Ant

A well-intentioned EP that treads the “too generic” line – at least for Brother Ali – The Bite Marked Heart finds the MC dedicating 7 tracks to love, whether at the formative flirtatious stage, or the aftermath of its ups and downs. We do get some pretty deep narratives here, again on both sides of the tonal line – opener Shine On is all meet cute; Years is a very searing exploration of the times passed with a significant other, good and bad – but a fair amount of Bite is, maybe appropriately? pretty fluffy. The sequencing tries to work with this, as the front half leans more toward upbeat vibes and the latter more contemplative, but overall, these don’t hit as hard as the majority of Ali’s stuff, and the production (from Jake One and Ant) tends to support that middling vibe.

The sad thing is, a lot of this stuff would easily work as singles for many artists, with those first few songs playing like something radio ready off a Grieves disc or something, but by this point – Mourning In America, Us – while Ali has certainly earned the right to dial it back a little bit for a love-soaked EP, it’s still tough when you’re able to compare some standouts on the disc to a larger amount of relative “filler,” whereas that ratio has definitely been reversed on other albums.

Circling back around to the production, I don’t mean to suggest it’s slack, with Shine On and the Phonte / Stokely-led I’ll Be Around and I Can’t Wait all featuring some really great layers, and memorable beats, but Ant’s playing more old-school Ali style overall – more in the Atmosphere mood of being laid back and looping – and Jake One sounds like he’s playing for a larger audience as opposed to necessarily working with Ali. It’s just a mixed bag.

Which isn’t unworth exploring, but none of the songs here are definitive Ali, I’d say. Mixed in with other songs, these would hold up well; collected together it’s pleasant, with some highs… but ultimately more forgettable compared to the artist’s main releases.