Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 29/09/08
Label: Domino

Made up of two black, Christian, lesbian rappers, Florida's Yo Majesty have been touted as a breath of fresh air for a hip-hop scene stale with chauvinism. But even from this extricated position the personality of their debut record frequently manages to collapse into cliché, delivering the kind of malleable hip-hop-does-clubland platitudes surely bound for exploitation on a future Girl Talk album.

In fact, it's hard to find a single original rhyme anywhere on "Futuristically Speaking…". Lyrically it's preoccupied with the sex, hedonism and misdemeanour that so intrigues the likes of 50 Cent or L'il Wayne and tracks like opener "F*cked Up" are as misogynistic as anything either of those two have put their name too. The difference here is that Yo Majesty don't have Dr Dre lacing their beats and the sleaze of their lyrics can't touch Wayne's for gross-out points.

Instead the Tampa-based duo have production team Hard Feelings UK to thank for a sound mainly seeking to meld the bass bounce, glistening synths and house vocals of B-More club music with crunk's wasted idiocy. "Blame It On The Change" (which, awesomely, sounds like a busy take on Parliament's "Atomic Dog"), "Club Action" and "Take It Away" are the most fully-realised examples of that blurry vision and would work fantastically well, you feel, in a club environment where less attention is paid to detail and more to the ritual shudder of bass bins. But listen closer and again lyrics disappoint, rapper Shunda K's verbiage lacking insight beyond the observation that it's hard to reach orgasm when drunk, her flow at times clumsy.

Conversely, some may think "Futuristically Speaking…" a landmark in post-millennial hip-hop - the fact that women are being slathered over and barked at by other women rather than men, some will no doubt argue, is enough in itself to earn it respect. But once you get to grips with the lusty main thrust of Yo Majesty's argument - and really, how long should it take anyone alive in 2008 to get over the concept of lesbian rap? - there's little to keep the attention of your ears beyond the promise that a handful of these 14 tracks would sound great to those out of their skull somewhere on a Friday night.

After that, it's just filler. Overlong and oversexed, "Futuristically Speaking…" stumbles where you will it to stride; something surprisingly staid and mediocre from extraordinary circumstances.

    by Kev Kharas