It’s not often that you hear about a beat-boxer putting out a full-length album, but leave it to former member of The Roots [click to read], Scratch [click to read], to do just that with his latest release, Loss 4 Wordz. With a strong guest-list, albeit sans Illadelph Halflife brethren, Grammy Award-winning Scratch takes the time to shine solo on the instrumentals, while notable names handle the vocal side of things. On the surface it seems like a formula that would work fairly well, however it seems that the execution of the plan fell short on Loss 4 Wordz.
The album starts out with the barely-memorable “Let’s Go” [click to listen], featuring Peedi Crakk on the vocals over a simplistic clarinet riff paired with Scratch‘s vocal percussion, then eases into two tracks featuring singers, as opposed to rappers. Musiq Soulchild holds down the singing on “Tonite,” while Daniel Bedingfield takes over on “If Our Love Was a Song.” The latter doesn’t scream “Hip Hop,” but instead ends up being the kind of song you would picture somebody’s girlfriend wanting to listen to when she wants something she can sing along to.
Scratch takes a very brief break from the singing and love songs to bring two tracks featuring rappers Kanye West, Consequence [click to read], and M.O.P. The expectedly solid rhymes that Kanye and Consequence bring to “Ready to Go” are weighed down by a subpar hook, and at this point in the album it becomes clear that the lyrics and vocals of the tracks seem to be overshadowing Scratch‘s beatboxing, which is quite ironic considering the track began with bragging about how Scratch won a Grammy for doing just that. “Get The F… Outta Here,” featuring M.O.P. and Showtime, is a welcome, yet out of place, break from the sappy love story that the rest of Loss 4 Wordz seems to be. With M.O.P. comes high energy, and Lil Fame brings nothing but that when he convincingly spits that it’s a “true story, I’ve come to knock you off, pop it off, lay it down, stomp the fuck out of your corpse!” Showtime comes correct with one of the strongest hooks on the album, but the track suffers from a severely short length (just under two minutes) and a very rough sound that could have benefited from more intricate mixing.
Scratch‘s beatboxing finally starts to shine on “The Man,” featuring Terri Walker and Estelle singing some extremely X-rated lyrics, however it is short lived as it transitions into the once again poorly mixed “Every Time” featuring Rosie Wilson. From here on out, the album is about love and women, and the aforementioned “Get the F… Outta Here” seems to feel more and more out of place. The high point of the album is hiding amongst these tracks, however, in the form of the Damon Albarn and Talib Kweli-assisted [click to read] track entitled “Too Late.” Albarn’s soothing vocals adorn a relaxing beat that compliments Scratch‘s style well, and when you least expect it the beat seamlessly switches up just as Talib begins rapping. Although his verse is short, it is solid, and Albarn joins back in to help the song cruise to its end. In addition to the strength of the style and vocals of this track, the sound quality is also solid in comparison to other tracks on the album.
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One has to acknowledge Loss 4 Wordz as being one of very few “beat-boxing albums,” however its weaknesses cannot be ignored. Although working with a beat-boxer for a whole LP could obviously seem tedious for a sound engineer, tracks such as “Midnight Hour” will make the listener wish that more time had been put into mixing the songs. It doesn’t sound quite like beat-boxing, and it doesn’t sound like a producer’s best work, either. The sequence of the tracks is somewhat confusing at times, jumping from a mellow love song right into something like the electro-dance, Arthur Baker-assisted “Girl I’m Gonna Make You.” One thing is for sure – Loss 4 Wordz doesn’t speak on what this veteran has proven capable of.
