Having established his reputation with the Beach Boys/Kanye West soundclash mash-ups that comprised last year's West Sounds, Lushlife reverts to more orthodox territory for Order of Operations. The majority of these tracks are built from jazz samples, in the manner of Gang Starr's DJ Premier - a looped scrabble of organ and sax on "Procession #2", a neat, buttoned-down guitar figure on "The Claremont Shuffle", etc - over which the DJ offers his own raps. And, to give him his due, Lushlife does employ a distinctive vocabulary all of his own; "The Deepest Concentration", for instance, features a self-appraisal beyond the usual braggadocio: "Just call me porcelain/ Just call me trickledown/ ...handbag/ ...vagabond/ ...cavernous/ ...dynamite/ ...distant land/ ...sandstorm". Well, if you insist, Handbag. His most impressive flow is on the single "No Foundation", which uses a construction metaphor to convey the cultural core of a community: "No bricks, no city/ No city, no block/ No block party, no beatbox/ No Cannibal Ox/ No foundation, no house to build/ No time, and you ain't got no time to kill."
DOWNLOAD THIS: 'The Claremont Shuffle', 'No Foundation', 'The Deepest Concentration'
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