Lyricist Lounge, Volume 2

Reviewed by:
David Peisner

Initially nothing more than a roving NYC open-mike night, the Lyricist Lounge has grown into a venerable franchise, spawning a tour, an MTV show and now, two full-length compilations. On the first installment in this series, the focus was clearly on hip-hop’s underground with only a couple of big names (De La Soul and Mos Def) bolstering a capable lineup of unknown MCs. Volume 2 brings a few more heavyweights on board (Macy Gray, Redman, Q-Tip) but doesn’t lose much of the raw, off-the-cuff vibe that flowed through the first outing. With experimental West Coast crews like Dilated Peoples and like-minded East Coast rhyme-hounds like Mos Def, Pharaoh Monch, and Talib Kweli sharing the air with raw populists like Beanie Sigel and Prodigy, the disc reveals the common ground all these diverse MCs walk. Like almost every compilation, there’s almost as much shit as there is shine, but thankfully the shine is bright enough to block out what we don’t want to hear.

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