Like an enormous proportion of their fan base, I jumped on the Hoods’ bandwagon with this release.
There was a lot of reasons for that. Firstly, it was the first time I remember hearing them. But more than that, it was the first time I heard Aussie hiphop that felt globally competitive. The rhymes were strong and the samples and beats added up to something catchy and creative.
The guys do a great job of building a strong narrative across the album about their experiences as a band, while showcasing their skills. I love some of the passages on Dumb Enough (especially the tsunami/origami pairing):
The ‘stickiest’ track is probably the big single too. Nosebleed Section speaks to anyone whose jumped around at the front of any gig hiphop or otherwise. I love that it’s built around a relatively obscure folksinger vocal too:
The album does quite maintain the quality throughout ther 17 tracks (it gets a bit sloppy on a couple of the ‘guest’ tracks and on Walk On and Working the Mic), but this is stronger than most hiphop longplayers in my collection.
File under: Answer the call
One Album a Day 