The Dirtball – Raptillion
Suburban Noize Records (released Sept. 19, 2006)
Rap
After releasing his debut album last year on Suburban Noize Records, Oregon native The Dirtball (né David Alexander) — who fronted the Salt Lake City-based rap collective Chola for six years — has scored several promotional gigs in the past year, including ones with Microsoft and Mountain Dew. After taking some time to enjoy his moderate success a bit, The Dirtball returns with his sophomore album, Raptillion.
Suburban Noize touts this as “underground hip-hop”1, while it actually sounds a lot more like the now ubiquitous Southern rap that we’ve all become familiar with thanks to the likes of Dem Franchise Boyz, Ying Yang Twins, and one shitstarter Lil Jon. Said shitstarter actually might have influenced the production of the beats on most of the songs, which are synth and bass heavy (as heard in “Raptillion” and “Project Upwordz”, which could have been released on TVT without any questions asked). The only real exception is “Just Me”, which is a pretty solid track that reminds me of E.C. Illa. However, The Dirtball’s voice and flow, at times reminiscent of a white Twista, is actually better than any of the aforementioned Southern rappers, who most of the time sound like they’re either in excruciating pain or just woke up. Dirtball actually has intensity in his voice, so kudos are in order there, but most of these songs sound the same and have nothing particularly exciting to offer the listener.
Seeing as this particular sound seems to be selling, it’s probably good for Suburban Noize to have one of these on their roster, which contains a whole slew of different styles and characters. The Dirtball is not something that particularly appealed to me, but there wasn’t anything on here that was painfully bad. For fans of that damned Southern rap, this would be an improvement over a large majority of what you like to request on your favorite radio station. For fans of the Suburban Noize family, you’re probably going to go out and buy it anyway no matter what I say, so have fun.
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ENDNOTE
1 I will acknowledge this as “underground” in that it’s an indie label, but “underground hip-hop” by rule of thumb tends to have a certain sound and feel to it. See, e.g., imprints such as (and artists signed to) Stones Throw Records, Definitive Jux Records, early Rawkus Records, and BBE Records.
