REVIEW: Evidence
‘Cats & Dogs’
Originally published in the Boston Phoenix (September 2011)
As competent as Evidence has always been with mic skills, he’s no lyrical miracle. In fact, he was the anomalous underground MC to escape the aughts without perpetually popping tongue-twisting linguistic feats at the expense of sense and substance. Evidence sometimes calls himself Mr. Slow Flow — a fitting moniker no doubt, but one that should perhaps be changed to Mr. I Think About My Raps Before I Breathe Them. Hip-hop substance is a long-gone phenomenon — both above and below ground — leaving this Dilated Peoples person as one of the few artists who curates albums that both massage primal rap receptors and elicit emotion.
As in his titanic solo debut, The Weatherman, here Evidence juxtaposes focused collaborations like the operatic Alchemist-spun “Red Carpet” next to faster moving solo cuts like the DJ Premier zinger “You.” All the while, on tracks like the coming-of-age nostalgia piece “I Don’t Need Love,” he dishes further tales about the path he rode from the beaches of Los Angeles to your headphones. That’s the Evidence difference: unlike liars, fakers, and bullshit artists, he backs up his name and claim with anecdotal gems aplenty.
