You! Me! Lancet!

This is only my second record review for Nightshift. Normally the editor does them all, but perhaps he just ran out of inspiration this month; or maybe he didn't want to give this record a bad review as Chima Anya lives down the road. Of course, now I've given him a lukewarm write up anyway, so Ronan had better hide - if Anya's a doctor he probably knows exactly where to hit to hurt the most.

CHIMA ANYA – NEW DAY (own release)

Rap is “CNN for black people”, claimed Chuck D. It’s a killer line, but too often listening to a bloated, second tier hip hop LP is like watching the endless, fumbling footage of a rolling news team stuck outside closed courtroom doors elaborating on nothing, or desperate commentators filling time during a scrappy no score draw. GTA member Chima Anya is a great example: he has a superb delivery and some decent lines, but this record could do with some focus, too many tracks drift off halfway through, or end up a smidgen trite.

Sonically the tracks are solid, and if Astrosnare’s production is rich it isn’t always astonishing, “Eye Choose You” being built on a bubbly electro swagger, and “Spell It Out” having cheery funk loops that wouldn’t have been out of place on some smiley faced Monie Love track from the Native Tongues era. The lyrics tend to reach the same level, often tidy and effective, but also clichéd. Things change vastly in the final two tracks, meditations on mortality and the complex role of the healer in society (Anya is a practising doctor, though some of his patients might be concerned by his playground talk of ho’s and people being “too gay”). We wish Anya could produce more music like this, fraught with honest emotion, shining his lyrical sensibility onto interesting subjects, rather than talking about women “eyeing on my tool”. Despite quality moments, this is just another talented local rapper who has produced an uneven album. And that ain’t news.