Buck 65

In a bid to return to his hip-hop roots, Buck 65 sidesteps his tendency towards self-produced albums by enlisting the aid of young buck Skratch Bastid. Although their original collaboration was scrapped for being too sample-heavy, Bastid remixed it, merging the fuller sound Buck was experimenting with on Talkin’ Honky Blues and Secret House Against the World with an emphasis on harder hip-hop drums and bass, filling it all out with sound effects and award-winning cuts worthy of a three-time Scribble Jam DJ Champ. Bastid’s beats bring out a reinvigorated Buck 65. And while it might not be a return to the swagger of previous alter ego Stinkin’ Rich, Buck does lose the old man voice in favour of dropping confident rap flows in his own voice, maybe for the first time ever. But, Buck being Buck, Situation strays far from the typical hip-hop subject matter, choosing instead to connect his album with the very loose concept of 1957. The year pops up quickly on "Intro” before Buck breaks into "1957,” his rap thesis on what makes that year so important to pop culture. He also uses first-person narratives to explore important developments from that period, like crime noir cops and robbers, rebels without a cause and fetish photography. Buck has become a great storyteller but it’s also awesome to hear a return to his more intricate rhyme patterns. Situation strikes a nice compromise between Buck 65’s hip-hop roots and his genre-bursting later years, resulting in his best work since Man Overboard.