Modern Hip-Hop has gotten thoroughly repetitive. Interchangeable rappers release one auto-tuned song after another. Enter Inner Loop Records recording artist K-Beta, who seeks to break that mold with his new album Inglorious Beta. There is no trace of auto-tune or other audio wizardry here; every track is built around the beat, the rhymes, and the message, and with track titles like “Black Business,” “Suicide,” and “I’m Bleeding” those messages aren’t of the club hopping variety.
Hailing from The DMV (The metro area around District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia) K-Beta raps with an intensity of someone with “a mind of a Malcolm, spirit of a Tupac,” lyrics taken from the single “That Black Man” and the overall theme of the album. The beats are so engaging that the gravity of the lyrics don’t sink in until a repeat listen, not that repeating songs is going to be an issue because they refuse to feel old even after a multiple hearings.
Inglorious Beta is available for free starting April 1st at DJBooth.net, and if you are looking for a distinctive Hip-Hop album that will keep you bumping from the first beat to the last you should check it out.