There are the essential albums that need to be in everyone's collection. There are the personal favorites, the ones that aren't highly acclaimed but still get played every once in a while. And then there are the albums that you stick in the back of your collection because you want to forget that you spent money on them. "Own It or Disown It" gives the writer the opportunity to look at such discarded albums and determine if they are diamonds in the rough or if they deserve to be used as mini-frisbees.
Seeing as how I gave Doomtree's No Kings a positive review this week, I figured it was only appropriate to take a look back at the album that got me interested in Doomtree in the first place. Audition was not P.O.S.’s first album—that would be Ipecac Neat, a good album in its own right—but Audition came out right around the time that I seriously started viewing hip-hop and rap as a legitimate art form (that sounds a bit cruel, but keep in mind that I was leaned on country music and emo, which…um, yeah). P.O.S. started off as a fan of punk rock before getting into rap, which is really how I got into it as well. I don’t think that this album could have come out at a better time in my life, so don’t expect me to rag on this too much.
In fact, I’ll get the ragging out of the way early. Audition was one of the first albums I bought from the iTunes Store, and in that respect, I probably should have picked an album that was mixed a little better as I thought it was a problem with iTunes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s manageable for the most part and is nowhere near as bad as Depeche Mode’s Playing The Angel (my high-water mark for bad mixing), but the opening reverb on “Living Slightly Larger” gets distorted on almost every set of speakers and headphones I’ve tested it on. Also, there are a few tracks that aren’t up to par, but these songs come relatively early in the album and are sequenced in a row. “Bush League Psych-Out Stuff” sees Atmosphere’s Slug do that thing where he sounds smart but really kind of sucks, “Paul Kersey to Jack Kimball” sounds like an Eminem song if he binged on Death Wish films, “Safety in Speed (Heavy Metal)” has Craig Finn of the Hold fucking Steady singing a verse about why he walked out on Predator, and “The Kill in Me” occupies time more than it does space. Oh, and it’s worth noting that the song titles are really, really weird.
Fortunately, the rest of the album is more than good enough to make it worth looking past these faults. “Half-Cocked Concepts” sees P.O.S. fire everybody ever for committing the crime of drinking Fresca, “De La Souls” plays out like a rap version of Jessica Andrews’s “Who I Am”, “Bleeding Hearts Club (MPLS Chapter)” twists DeBarge’s “I Like It” into something intimidating, and any arguments about P.O.S.’s technical ability as a rapper should end with “A Teddy Bear and a Tazer”. The production is worth praising, too, as it manages to pull off combining elements of hip-hop and punk perfectly.
Really, though, I don’t have much to say about this album—it's a damn good album and I dare anyone to argue otherwise. I like to pretend that there’s some doubt as to whether or not I think an album is worth checking out, but there isn’t much to fault here. P.O.S. topped himself with his next album (2009’s Never Better), and I think that Dessa’s A Badly Broken Code is better than Audition, too, but this album is a good starting place for anyone looking to get into Doomtree. Think of this as the Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) to Never Better’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx—you have to start somewhere.
VERDICT: OWN
This marks the first—and last—column I will ever write in the same day as a 5K race. On the bright side, I will spend the next month talking about albums that are ranked high on Metacritic’s rankings. I call it Owning Metacritic because I’m immature like that. Next week, I’ll look at a country album that is apparently as good as Smile, if its current score is to be believed.
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