Paycheck to Paycheck
- Artist: The Comfortable Creeps
- Album released in 2007
- FTB Recordings
- Genre: Hip-Hop & Rap
Related links:
- Hometown CD Review (June 4, 2008)
Songs:
1) Kerri’s Carcass
2) Propaganda Pollution
3) Stolen Destruction
4) Spit Some Shit
5) We Ain’t Havin’ That
6) Dutch Masters Intro
7) Dutch Masters
8) Requiem for Your Mom
9) How Would Life Be
10) Opinions
11) Rain on Grand
12) Condoleeza [sic] Rice
13) Suffering
14) Doin What He Wants
15) Habitchual
16) Anthem
17) Throw the First Punch
18) Long Remembered
As producers, Comfortable Creeps create beautiful soundscapes with an adherence to traditional 1990s New York underground hip-hop: each song follows the template perfected by Black Star on their 1999 release, Respiration. All Comfortable Creeps tracks start out with a nice cut from a jazz guitar or an old movie clip and orchestral strings. After a few bars the group drops in the bass line and begins rapping. That’s where things go wrong.
Comfortable Creeps rap competently. Trading time on the mike, the emcees convey urgency and confidence with their voices. But their scattershot writing falls short of their skill level. They lack cohesion and read from different scripts; one draws a narrative about street life, another rants an antiwar screed, while another falls into the genre trap of calling out other musicians and boasting of musical supremacy. Worse still are their unimaginative clichés of crack-addicted mothers and calling other hip-hop groups “wack and gay.”