Deviants of Reality - The Art of Mind Travel

I have always liked hip-hop/rap that is funny and with an edge, not wack. These rhymes are lame, and because of that so is the group's name. They sound like anything but Deviants of Reality, unless that departure has been from the reality that you have to be kind of hard in order to pull off an attempt like this successfully. These grooves are somewhat soft.

"The Art of Mind Travel" [Waako Records/ZYX Music], paints with invisible ink and goes nowhere in spite of a first track "Intro" that takes off like an in-flight movie. I'm not sure what is missing, maybe a few well-placed bad words. They give props to the likes of Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth and A Tribe Called Quest, but I don't hear any of that in this effort. The delivery of these rhymes is halting and difficult to bounce to even though the background beds are solid. That is hard to pull off. "What Is Black?" is slightly reminiscent of Digable Planets, a 1994 poetry-influenced bunch whom The Deviants didn't mention in their liner creds.

These are elementary cuts that try to sound profound, but their words are all too clear in the way that they are understood easier than most musik that is Hip-Hop. Many of the greatest songs of all time contained lyrics that our minds could not easily comprehend upon the first listen. It took the repetitive play of radio eventually allowing allow most of us to finally decipher them, often on a day when we were not even thinking about the songs actively. This will not be necessary with The Deviants. Hey, maybe that's a good thing...

On "Let it Go" you hear the most hope from the group primarily due to the "If I ever Lose This Heaven" sample. The next and only "jam" on this, "So Special" follows that trend in that it makes clever use of Isaac Hayes' "Never Gonna Give You Up" groove and the female stylings of Robin Hyson. "Do What you Do" features another femme du jour in Marlena.

This is more Def Jam verse than G-unit raw. At best I feel that these kids are musicians and may be burgeoning producers. I hear that in the title track, "The Art of Mind Travel." It is bright as a flute and a little jazzy, taking this CD to a potential crescendo and picking up the total musikal momentum.

On "What U Want Now", you'll hear the hippest cut. Too bad they saved it for last. It is also the only time I heard the "n-word" on the entire disc, and for that, the Deviants deserve credit. I've got to bust them, though, for trying to revive a refrain from thirty years ago in "Yes Yes" (y'all, to the beat y'all).

You're correct in feeling that this CD may grow on you with subsequent listens. Poor positioning of cuts may be the reason. In all, a tale of two CDs; weak cuts one through six -stronger songs seven through fourteen. Can you be a patient listener? It took many tries for me to deviate from reality in this way, and that is why I give this musik (they spell like I do, you'll C) two-and-a-half stars out of five.