God, what a disappointment. Disregarding their horrible name, I grabbed this to hear their mixture of hip hop and classical violin, as I find both of those to be pleasant and a possibly gold combination.The album starts off strong with "Broken Sorrow", showing off great violin work combined with some basic hip hop beats and minimal vocalizing. The next song, "Struggle", hints at problems to come. It begins great, with some violins and a spoken passage of someone being kicked off the subway (fun fact: these two started their career playing on the NY subways), but then, then it kicks into a very sterile hip hop song. Not to say that the music is bad, or that they just grunt and pose all over it, but...it just has that super processed and produced sound, like any big radio hit. The lyrics aren't bad - they're not great, but not bad - and the music is pretty rad, but it was just a big turnoff. Ok, moving on. The next song is another violin-centric piece, with the hiphop elements relegated to small portions of it. If all the songs were like this, I would call this album a rousing success. But then the album degenerates further, going so far into generic hip hop territory that it made me cringe. Even while they're being backed by smooth violin prowess, each song has that same old feel to it.
I should have known by their name, sure. But fuck me, the violins are so good, and ultimately so wasted. This would be a fantastic way for the mainstream rap listeners to get into more intelligent material, but for me, it's just disappointing.
Verdict: Fail [2/5] ( give me strings, not stringz)
http://www.myspace.com/nuttinbutstringzmusic
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