Toronto DIY rapper Admiral Crumple drops another musical brick on the long road to his coveted Rolling Stone magazine cover. Over the last decade, he has continued to improve and perfect his style, only jumbling his words a few times over these 14 tracks. The beats, as usual, are the highlight. Crumple's dark production is solid and heavily influenced by Necro, especially opening track "Gather," but on Cryptkid he also experiments with chiptune beats on the title track, "Poverty Street" and "Ashlyn," all to fine effect. However, his drums could still use more change-ups within the songs — currently, they tend to just play straight through as a loop.
Lyrically, Crumple paints bleak pictures of the inner city, but the album is primarily positive, with plenty of references to God, love, family and friends and striving to achieve your goals, as well as being very anti-drugs. On the other hand, it also glorifies guns and violence, and has a lot of sexual references, which tend to run counter to the godliness. Still, Crumple's fanbase will eat it up, and the increase in sound quality should win him a few new fans.
(Cataphonic)Lyrically, Crumple paints bleak pictures of the inner city, but the album is primarily positive, with plenty of references to God, love, family and friends and striving to achieve your goals, as well as being very anti-drugs. On the other hand, it also glorifies guns and violence, and has a lot of sexual references, which tend to run counter to the godliness. Still, Crumple's fanbase will eat it up, and the increase in sound quality should win him a few new fans.