1. Suppy?
The first track of The Fall Of The Crooked Empire, co-produced by Volyoom Team’s Young Weezy, is a great starting point to the setting of a general mood along the album’s duration that feels like an ambient anthem to anarchy. The best lyrics on this one are the parts way you feel like the rapper, Twyll The ChyllTyrant is repeating himself in an effort to subdue a dark but wildly tangible techno background beat.
9/10
2. Rapstreet
The second song’s hook takes the listener offguard right off the bat as the soon to be repeated verbal stop sign points indiscriminate listeners back and away from the lyrical slaughter that ensues thereafter. The beat sounds like a throwaway from The Terminator soundtrack. Interestingly, it captures the essence of the vocal presence with headlight-stricken awesome effects. As the song continues, the lyrics distinctly get more and more hardcore, until a final threat is given to all record labels looking to acquire the fame of Tyrant.
9/10
3. X-Trinity
If darkness was ethereal, and imagination was let out of all inhibitions then the result might be the sounds that the artist tries to portray on X-Trinity. X-Trinity takes the step up to the lyrical bat quite strongly, convincingly threatening to beat up other drummers or producers in the first bars alone.
9/10
4. Hit & Run
Hit & Run follows the theme that has carried throughout the beginning few tracks of the album, and does accomplish it’s main goal quite easily, as allowing a breath of escape to be squandered by strange sounding beat. The hook doesn’t quite set right, until the very end of the song, and this is at least an interesting offering for the album, though not a standout track by itself.
7/10
5. Alive
In the introduction to this song, a lot of grandiose speeches are made that can easily take a listener to the point of discomfort. The technique though, is quite effect in the idea that the song is willing to sacrifice itself to portray. The idea is the simplicity of beats against the complexity of lyrics. At a quick second notice, however, the track is actually filled with a plethora of sounds that grow in number as the song progresses. Some of the effects might clash, and not mesh well with each other, but the lyrics have the effect of grabbing the track itself with vicious commitment to let underground flows of killing sprees spew forth. Intense and scary.
7/10
6. The Joker
With a long accapella joke said for the first moments of the song that would go on to be known as the acronym BREAD (Best Rapper Ever Alive or Dead), the listener is immediately sent to a state of reminiscence that was first seen in the songs Hit & Run as well as Alive. It seems as though the majority of the effort however is focused on diversity with the selection of lyrics. Overall a magnificent song and arrangement by producer DJ ChyllTyrant. Masterfull.
10/10
7. Day Of The Lick
The beat on Day Of The Lick, taken from MGMT’s Kids, is probably a big reason that the song takes off on it’s own so well. The promise that the hooks used by both the DJ as well as the MC on the song, combined deliver a vicious ripping of a modern day classic by a rock artist contemporary to the talented DJ ChyllTyrant. Part of the song’s momentum is due to the artist as a rapper, specifically, however, a quality that on previous songs is less proven, and the raps are indeed very skillfull.
10/10
8. Symphony Of Chaos
This is one of the albums very few lows that are created by treble-heavy beats that overwhelm vocal selections that are often almost too thought provoking to be obtainable or enjoyable to the audience. While beat analyzing results in quite the discovery of an exciting cacophony, with samples from The Fall Of Troy’s I Just Got This Symphony Going. Although it represents a startlingly inspired DJ effort, it fails to maintain cadence in the face of such heavy subject matter that is handled by the historic and politically charged distorted lyrics. The few glimpses of greatness within the tumultuous songwriting was indeed the instrumental’s guidance to lyrics that are stripped right off The End off The Raven and The Crow mixtapes, by Tyrant, originally on the industry instrumental made popular by Three Six Mafia on the song with the same title off their album of the same name. The End talks rather high brow about such delicate subjects as politics and religions, but can it withhold it’s own voice to the riot of noises that collide it with the beat itself?
5/10
9. Eat Food
A subtle touch of dance music is injected in the following song, the masterfully written and orchestrated musical vision of the hunger as an artist to fulfill natural instincts. The track digs right in and hits home with the quality lyrics and choruses, with a little extra help supplied by frontwoman MZY.
9/10
10. Bad Boy
Bad Boy is a classic of electro-hop in it’s own genre of hardcore gangster lyricism, as well as a standard setter for producers to follow on the production end. Easily one of the best songs on the album, this one deserves special attention as that it actually reuses the same exact instrumental back to back three times to run down a clear message. The rapper propels himself forth at this point from the position of the person that is merely gluing the songwriting together, to the helm of charge with the point of creating a character to follow with personality and charisma as well as vocal presence.
10/10
11. A Simple Man
Despite being pretty controversial, the rapper gimmick that had been established on the previous track, carries throughout the following extremity-reaching lyrical offensive. Being A Simple Man with an intricate plan seems to be like blueprint of the agenda of the rest of the album. It points us to the agenda and platform of the MC, Tyrant, as his claims may be wild, we are reassured that he is making statements of all seriousness.
9/10
12. Through The Windshield
As a metaphor itself, the breaking of glass is one used in many artistic efforts worldwide. The idea behind this song seems to be brought right to the very surface of the music. The sound of glass breaking is the first sound on the beat, and the last is the static of an unused mic check session. Is it a general degeneration for the listener, or a degeneration for the beat itself with the lyrics as the window that stands to be broken by the amplifications of noise that permeates the song, seems to be the question posed by the musical enterprise. A genuine adrenaline-rush.
10/10
13. NINJ BOMB
The combined showmanship of both the beat as well as the chorus-heavy lyrics on the song is the strength of this song. Co-produced by Real Ninj Truth, the beat is a driving nonchalant insanity, but the lyrics don’t really give the proper alludement of the truer emotions of the song, as they lend themselves more readily to the cause of the chorus that by the mid-point of the song is at its most intense, right in time to drop off and give way to a harder-than-nails techno-tronic soundpiece.
8/10
14. Wiidescreen
The Black Out Man instrumental, when used by Tyrant on The Fall Of The Crooked Empire, utilizes a short series of hooks that seem to resonate in the dark howling screeches of the instrumental. The metaphor is simple, but the execution is crafty and creative.
8/10
15. The Crooked Empire
Classic, The Crooked Empire on The Fall Of The Crooked Empire acts as in-house active speaker for the collection on the album. It represents everything that The Crooked Empire as an artist and Twyll The ChyllTyrant as a poet seem so ready to try to claim. Simply a masterpiece of immense proportions, The Crooked Empire is the epitome of The Fall Of The Crooked Empire’s emotionless charge through rampant rap rampages.
10/10
16. The Criminal Era
Every artist has a theme that corrects the perspective lens of the beholder of his craft. The Criminal Era is clearly Twyll The ChyllTyrant’s anthem, then, and the trademark high trebles in the instrumentation collapse beautifully on the rigid struggling drumline, while Tyrant remarks on the utter decimation on the industry that he has caused.
10/10
17. Filthy
The seventeenth song on The Fall Of The Crooked Empire is very dance heavy in the beat area and in the realm of lyrics is one of the most standout pieces. With slang of his own melded with old and new, both with pulp culture reference galore, Filthy slides in a hefty surprise offering in the collection on The Fall Of The Crooked Empire. Interestingly enough, though, the hardcore reality of the album at this point that has taught the listener to respect the artist, seems to slide in an extra under the belt shot with it’s incessantness by the end of the piece. Overall, almost disappointingly on point, Filthy is an old classic that when heard with new ears on The Fall Of The Crooked Empire, is given new life.
10/10
18. Total Tyrant
While the title of this song seems to hint that we should ready ourselves as the audience to be bombarded by lyricism that should be unparalleled, it appears that the artist has taken it to his own hands with the creativity and almost turns what should be a swan dive to a cannonball. This is easily one of the weaker parts of the album, but the saving grace would be the same first words in the hook that lead us into our initial disappointment. A song that never ends, would seem to be better in contrast, possibly, but Total Tyrant definitely brings true some promises if one was rating on a scale of satisfactory offensive creativity.
6/10
19. The Sounds Of Violence
Very few times does an artist of many multitudes of levels get a chance to exhibit as many talents, perhaps as this track. Combining both hardcore and thought-provoking, political and conscious, lyrical and gangsta rap styles with a production of awesome enormity. The gigantic knowledge of music is truly wept through each howl of the deadpan flute ensemble that strings together verse after verse of horrendously offensive The Nightmare-ish style rap lays on a deadly bassline that never lets up through an outstanding performance of heart wrenching motivations.
10/10
20. The Shakedown
The heavy background to The Shakedown sustains the ambience set by the previous songs on the album, while at the same time revitalizing it somewhat with it’s heavy knocking bangs and trill synthesization. The lyrics are a good pairing.
9/10
21. Boogie
Starting low and raising in decibel, the shrill riffs of the guitars are from …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s Ounce Of Prevention. If it lacks the correct sound for the lyrics, be not surprised as the lyrics are geared more towards short momentum bursts rather than the more methodically sound style that would seem more fitting to the beat, but the effect can be quite entrancing, as the lulls in the beat make for a great blank canvas for the vocals to reach full potential on the stark sonic instrumental. The lyrics are quite inspired actually, and seem to be bubbling over with poignant and potent substance.
9/10
22. MOFO Freestyle
The idea is pretty simple, and the symbolism runs thick in the event of MC freestyle ciphers, but the one thing that stands this apart from the other freestyles that were made over beats in the past is that this is a self-produced performance, as well as a heavily edited one, as we can easily tell from the missing keyword “motherfucker”. Although very avant-garde, the effect is pretty good as the samples of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode run over the whole track. It turns the song into an engrossing experience that is still not for the weak or mild mannered listener, for sure, although the missing word leaves the track absent of real objectionable words.
8/10
23. The Fall Of The Crooked Empire
By adding a speeded up version of The Crooked Empire, The Fall Of The Crooked Empire closes it’s chapter in the catalog of Twyll The ChyllTyrant & The Crooked Empire & Association (C.R.E.M.) albums.
10/10
10/10
Average Song = 8.4
Overall Album = 8
Final Rating =
8/10
