Serge Severe

There are a lot of old school party raps on here, with Serge reiterating his skills on the mic both through his lyrics and his flow. He also details the struggles of being an MC on several tracks, and on "Break Dream" details his history with hip hop, from a kid breakdancing and collecting stacks of vinyl. He takes a serious turn on "Slow Down Baby," in which he and Mic Crenshaw describe the perils of a life of crime with sympathy and honesty.
Serge holds his own on the mic, but the real star here is Universal DJ Sect, who produced all the tracks on the album. Universal mines old soul, jazz, and funk records for his beats, and the result is 12 tracks of the kind of sample-based hip hop that has been an endangered species ever since De La Soul and Biz Markie got their asses sued. There's the bounce of "Here I Come," the chopped up Al Green of "Concrete Techniques," the jazzy funk of "Ain't It Funky," the horns on the aptly titled "Bring the Horns," and the nasty bass and guitar on "Classic Ish." "Operatin' Correctly" has a four-on-the-floor beat reminiscent of Eric B. and Rakim, and the KRS One sample makes it seem like it was recorded in '88, not '08. Universal also offers up some slower, more pensive beats on "This Path" and "Slow Down Baby," which are matched by Serge Severe's pensive rhymes. It's rare that one producer handles the boards for an entire album, and Universal mixes it up enough so that it never gets boring.
What with the old school sampled beats, and the old school battle rhymes, "Concrete Techniques" seems in some ways like a product of another era, when rappers where dreaming about going gold, not platinum, and were more concerned with being the fiercest MC on the block than on shifting product and moving units. Serge Severe looks back to a simpler time, when rappers were judged by the strength of their flow and not the length of their rap sheet or whether or not they had a vodka line. Put "Concrete Techniques" on and imagine an alternate universe where Diddy never happened, where Eric B. was still president, and where hip hop stayed true to its roots.