4 out of 5

Produced by: Abilities

Label: Rhymesayers

Starting from the manic word explosion of E&A’s Now and that album’s accompanying heavy, head-bobbing production, and then experiencing the raw, sloppy punk style of By The Throat, it can be hard to go back to Eyedea and Abilities’ first release, First Born.  The album is much more topically dense than those other releases – some would criticize dense to the point of pretension – and the beats generally slower and sparser, maybe just a reverbed steady-state drum.  It doesn’t initially offer a memorable single.  The album art looks amateurish.  And coming at it from the other chronological direction – hyped off of Eyedea’s battle rap notoriety and Abilities’ scratch-competition wins, I can only imagine the disappointment regarding the album’s (compared to those laurels) simplicity, at least in terms of rhyming speed and turntablism tricks.

But First Born plays the long game.  After you’ve exhausted all of your other Eyedea / Abilities related listens, including the excellent Oliver Hart disc, which shares some themes and sounds with this album, going back and experiencing FB rewards new appreciation for it – and props to anyone who got it the first time around.

The abstraction of and obsession with themes of identity and personality proved to be lasting interests for Eyedea, a.k.a. Mike Larsen; what might’ve come across as eye-rolling “I read a book about this” terminology drops related to Sophocles and Quantum Physics on First Born can be realized as an undistilled and impressively lyricized study on Larsen’s own psyche, and what he justified as fueling him to write.  Later mentions of voices and depression, and some of By The Throat’s forced positivity – along with an assumed interpretation of his sleeping pill accidental overdose – suggest a man eventually worn down by these thoughts, or playing them off behind B-Boy posturing a la E&A.  But the emotions are clear and proud on First Born, even if, yes, it’s a bit like listening to your self-obsessed friend rant about his self-obsession.  It’s not uninteresting, but it triggers our own innate narcissism, and we roll our eyes.  Which is a worthwhile response: No one should be in that mode all the time, hence Larsen cutting off his own parables / thoughts with occasional battle tracks on the disc, like the fun closing bonus track with a youthful sounding Blueprint, or more typical cultural criticisms like Big Shots.  Accepting that this is how Mike thinks, though, can get us past the eye-rolls, appreciating intense studies like Birth of a Fish, or On This I Stand, which are more focused and less cheesy than some comparable tracks on other releases.  The lack of reliance on nonsense rhymes and repetition and the overall range of how many different ways Larsen manages to approach his obsessions makes this, lyrically, my favorite Eyedea release.

Musically, the album starts off with slow mixes One and Music Music before dropping more typical beats that are, as mentioned, seemingly rather simple.  Abilities has his own track (creatively named DJ Abilities) to remind us what he can do, but otherwise, hearing his presence on the disc may seem like a fool’s errand.  …But – and sure, maybe I’m giving too much credit, but – I think restraint is the name of the game here.  Many of the notable Rhymesayers beat makers (BK One, Ant) are masters of holding back and letting their MC shine, knowing when to cut loose and, if producing, how best to achieve the album’s intended sound.  First Born is asking for one to lay back and think – except when it wants you to get up and cheer – and Abilities’ echoey, paced beats and minor additions of dreamy keys or samples match this.  And then the more I listen, the more subtleties I hear, underlining this sense of purpose.  It also makes those tracks that opt for a more ear-catching beat really stand out.

So what’s getting in the way of making this five stars?  Well, the description above I think still does suggest that there’s a barrier to entry for the album.  It requires some context with the duo to really work.  And another part of this – adding to that barrier – is the sequencing.  The opening tracks are interesting aurally but pretty unmoving, and Larsen speaks in First about washing MTV out of your ears – suggesting he’s gonna rip us a new one – before launching into a happy-smiley power-of-music track, and then several philosophical tracks.  This butts up against the sudden tonal shifts of the battle tracks, which are, as mentioned, welcome breaks, but it’s like we’re either on or off topically, no middle ground.  And the album dithers for an ending, settling on an excellent closer but uncertain what to do beforehand to effectively build up to that closer.

So, yeah, it’s not wholly cohesive.  But the net value of the album is more than positive, and remains intact despite these road bumps.  Maybe I should discredit the album more for having so many prerequisites for listening, but there’s also not much quite at its level, so I’m definitely willing to forgive.