Record Exchange Boise

Reviews:

A member of Los Angeles clique the Living Legends who recently recorded thefine Felt: A Tribute to Christina Ricci EP with Slug from Minneapolis'sAtmosphere on Access Hip Hop, Murs has a lot riding on The End of the Beginning,his first solo album to gain widespread distribution. Even more to the point,he sounds like he's got a lot riding on it. End feels a bit anxious,by which I do not mean fast, though he's that too: Murs is probably thequickest-lipped rhymer in the Definitive Jux stable. (Check the speedy firstverse of "The Dance," which mocks fake gangstas—"Sayin'how you kill s***/ Bullets still in your gun… You're about to getrolled up, hold-up way /Just an MC that was trying to make hay/ Now you gota gun all up in your face/ Thought it'd be fun to front on tape/ Now youwish you'd have stuck to drum and bass"—in less than 15 seconds.)

"Anxious" in this case means hungry and impatient, especially withthe record business. End is full of potshots: "The industry is runningthis underground s***," he laments on opening track "You and I,"and at one point he even breaks indie-hop's unspoken taboo about mentioningthe low melanin count of most of its fans. As such, songs like "Last Night"(which makes an interesting match for Scarface's wary hood tribute "OnMy Block": "Last night I almost got shot on my block") are theexception, not the rule. Once he relaxes a little, he should be unstoppable.