Anticipation can be misleading. You wait for a particular album from one of the most promising/talented rappers in the industry and it doesn’t come. It gets released a year later which is four years too late. When you finally get it you notice on the track listing that all your favorite singles from the radio are there plus a few interesting titles. From the cover you notice that album artwork looks like another debut album but this time not from South Africa but America. You press play nonetheless. How does this album sound like you wonder?
From jump the first voice you hear on Family Values is not that of Riky Rick but his young son. The music on the background is reminiscent of the graphic of the big bang theory that shows man evolution as a species. The intro seems to chart Riky Rick’s life from infancy to fatherhood. A ‘Time to Love’, the first official song find him jubilant and singing even though he spits about his father who passed. The Boom bap inspired ‘Wonder Years’ finds him boasting about his debut album being a classic. Although his voice fails in being too soft to be gruff you get his point when he chants that he feels like ‘Makaveli’. The beat to ‘Makeveli’ is the trap fare that we’ve become accustomed to the nod to Tupac seems to me like a back to the future thing where Tupac has travelled to 2015. ‘Boss Zonke’ as a song is so great that the video was jinxed to be bad before it was even conceptualized. No video director could capture the essence a proverbial Mr Cool from the Hood
The family theme runs throughout the album with interludes serving as a break from the music although the interludes are too short at times. ‘Papa Song’ is the most emotional Hip Hop song I’ve heard in a while it recalls Kanye’s ‘Big Brother’ and Tupac’s ‘I ain’t Mad at Cha’. No album is complete without a love song, ‘Sondela’ finds Riky in LL Cool J mode as he spits about his girls. ‘Bambalela’ and ‘94’ ensures that the conscious heads are covered. ‘Thuglife’ continues the Tupac allusions while ‘Shining’s finds him waxing lyrical about his previous and future accomplishments. The features are limited to Black Motion, Zano, Okmalumkoolkat and Cassper Nyovest.
The standout track on the album is without a doubt ‘Come Alive’ featuring and Okmalumkoolkat and Cassper Nyovest. At first the track sounds like any other trap influenced club track but closer listen shows that this is in fact a club track in the EDM tradition, the track sounds like something that Danny Brown would lace.
After numerous listens it dawns on you that ‘Nafukwa’ sounds like it’s sampled from a Clint Eastwood Western. You then remember that the producer/emcee hybrid in South Africa has been dormant since Amu released an album. You want to call this a classic but you wait until it’s been a year. As the selfish fan of music that you are you wish that this was a double album.
Overall Rating: 7/10
Check out the album on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/za/album/family-values/id968067554
Review by @kabelomutubi