Villa Manifesto

A 16 track pop album (57m 17s) — released September 6th 2010 on Fat Beats

Through the group's misfortune, Slum Village remains. Villa Manifesto showcases past, present, and future members at their lyrical best. Judging from the buzz that was created from the Digital EP in late 2009 and the vinyl EP in June 2010 this LP will take its place as a classic in authentic hip hop. Gone are the days of their easy-listening 2004 hit "Selfish" in which SV teamed up with a young, relatively unknown Kanye West to rap of juggling women. No, Manifesto is darker. A lot darker. Even the album's instrumentals, always an SV strong suit, are more aggressive than in past works. "The Reunion Pt. 2" couples ominous instrumentals with retrospective lyrics that revisit SV's history, and Baatin lays down his best verse of the album here, delving deep into how his struggle with alcoholism and mental health problems forced him to leave the group. He ends his verse with a sad, but fitting, thank you: "Lord gave me another chance/ to do my thing in this hip hop/ doing the slum dance." The same sort of intense, in-your-face musical passages color "Where Do We Go from Here" in which strings don't soothe, they're menacing, almost forcing your head to nod. Young RJ - Black Milk's partner in crime from B.R. Gunna - produced the song, and he's a true star of the album, having produced seven of its 13 songs, and makes SV's darker, more mature lyrics work. Even T3, the group's only 13-year mainstay, takes giant strides here. The emcee often substituted style for substance, leaving deeper meanings for lyrical masterminds Elzhi and Baatin. But he digs beneath the surface for "The Set Up" vividly describing how SV is called to cover a friend's debt. And he spits absolute fire in "Scheming".
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