Eastborn - Word Perfect (Drop Zone Records - 2002)

Despite my international hip hop digging inclinations over the years, Scottish hip hop is something that has pretty much eluded me aside from a couple artists. Eastborn is one of those artists and he brought a pretty decent album to the world in 2002, namely "Word Perfect". In fact at it's time of release this album was somewhat of a blessing as it was one of the very few albums around that touched on the hard UK sounds of old. It's not relentlessly rapid fire hardcore from start to finish but certainly there's a majority of raw bangers on the album for those who love the britcore sounds.

So what does Eastborn, a Scottish rapper, sound like anyway ? Well let's put it this way, whilst you can tell he's Scottish if you listen hard enough, in fact he's not really that distinct in sound from a lot of his southern peers in England (however his accent is more apparent on the accapella "Freestyle Frenzie" track). Or maybe better said by telling you not to expect anything as exaggerated or strong as what you might imagine Billy Connolly in "rap mode" to be like. Accents aside he's a really solid rapper and he's at his best over the uptempo tracks where there's a great aggressive touch to his style.

As I mentioned above there are few tracks here for the britcore heads and to me they are the ones that really make this album worthwhile. By far and above "Ruthless" is the absolute pinnacle, killer of a track on here. Easiest way to describe it would be by taking "Intergalatic" by the Beasties, darken it up a bit more/take away that Beasties "goofiness", give Eastborn that semi-distorted "over the phone" rapping style that the Beasties (again) used on "Check The Mic", throw in DJ Krash Slaughta delivering wicked scratches of D.O.C. samples for the chorus and paint it with a hardcore UK hip hop final coat. I really love this track and have to admit that I often grab this album off the rack just to play this song over and over, which is not a slight on the rest of the album but an indication of how highly I rate this track. "Stop him in his tracks, show him that I am ruthless" !

Another winner on here harking back to the days of old is "Inner City Lullaby". The production runs not much deeper than a truly neck breaking, head snapping, funky dope break beat with heavy bass thumps underneath it and it is all the better for it's stripped back undercooked rawness. Eastborn delivers some lovely rough fiery rhymes on it and swift and sharp cutting from DJ Switch ties a ribbon around this package of dopeness. "Box Fresh" is another cool track on here which is basically Eastborn going all out on the mic over beatbox beats and scratches provided by Psylent V, with some nice violins sitting behind it all.

An awesome mid song beat change-up occurs on the track "Cross Country" (feat. Disorda and Mista Defy from II Tone Commitee). The song starts off kind of mellow and tame for Disorda's opening verse but when the song hits the 1min30 mark it changes character drastically into an aggressive attack as a boombastic chest hammering beat kicks in for the verses by Eastborn and the very Scottish sounding Mista Defy who brings the song to a magnificent conclusion. Special mention for more brilliant DJ work on this one too.

"Terror Mind Glide" and "Red 6" are pretty good songs too but carry slightly more generic modern day production with mid tempo beats and moody loops behind them and probably do suffer a bit (according to my tastes anyway) by being sequenced on the album alongside the superior rough and hectic bangers in "Inner City Lullaby" and "Ruthless".

There are two or three lesser tracks here though and they all sit back to back in the second half of the album. I'm bit torn by "One Lumbajack, two lumbajack, three ...", as I like the rapid flows on it by Eastborn and guest MC Mista Bohze (also from II Tone) and also dig the quickish pace of the drums, however it features a massive overdose of Show and AG/DITC styled horns which just sound messy to me and dominate the track far too much. Coming after a brief interlude the next two tracks are generally FFWD's for me also. One is "Way of Life", which is really far too mellow and jazz break vibey for my liking and is the kind of mid 90's NY sounding song that you'd have heard 200 times before if you've been around hip hop for a while (think less interesting versions of Black Moon, Pete Rock, Gangstarr etc). "Return of the Olmec" follows and is pretty much a turn off for me as soon as the girl sings out the chorus (it's just not my thing), despite having slightly more interesting production than the prior track with a decent haunting sci-fi darkness to it which can probably be compared to an early New Flesh 4 Old or Scientists of Sound style - but nowhere near as good due to R&B missy on the chorus.

Don't let any of the minor negatives scare you though because overall this is a great album with its roots firmly set in the days of UK hip hop past and is definitely one for the fans of hard and raw hip hop product (with a touch of more current styles which should keep the young heads interested as well). It's pretty cool and fresh to be listening to a Scottish rapper too as they've been a very quiet minority in hip hop compared to their brethren south of the border.