And so veteran L.A. hip-hop crew Dilated Peoples – contemporaries of J5, People Under The Stairs and the like – return with long overdue fifth studio full length Directors Of Photography. Dilated’s career is one that can broadly be divided into two distinct eras – the boom-bap of the first two (official) LPs The Platform and Expansion Team on the one hand and everything else (more new school beats, slower bpms, less obvious hooks and more layered production) on the other. Sonically, this falls into the second of those groups. Well they can’t keep on doing the same old thing can they? Er – except they’ve arguably been doing this sort of thing for longer now than they did the whole The Platform/ Expansion Team thing. That’s not to say there aren’t moments of interest and the album wisely places the doom-laden chords of the Premier-produced Good As Gone, the Aloe Blacc featuring Show Me The Way (two of the best things they’ve done in a decade) and Babu’s scratch-fest Figure It Out (Melvin’s Theme) in the middle of its sixteen tracks. Overall though, this is more the sort of fare likely to appeal to fans of the recent Evidence/ Alchemist Step Brothers project than to work the angles for fans of classic early Dilated. No preview LP audio yet so you’ll have to make do with a re-up on the two singles so far below…
(Out 11 August on Rhymesayers)