JTTG - Konoha Nights

So with his debut beat-tape having been out for a week or so now; I feel JTTG's new tracks have begun to sink into the scene a little; I also feel like now is an appropriate time to put out a review on the piece. See, we never really wanted this blog to be just another "press release" for artists, which is why we tend to not post the majority of tracks sent to us until we feel the scene has shown a degree of inherit interest in them. But now that all is said and done I feel it's a good moment to let you guys know that I think this mixtape is fucking ill, so imma muse a little.

See, not many mixtapes follow a storyline; while we hear of over-played groups putting out "concept-albums" all the time we rarely see much of this underground; most mixtapes, good or bad, tend to be a random assembly of ideas and concepts, but The Next Hokage takes a different approach. For while some people might grimace at a Naruto-themed anything, once you get into it you pretty much....yeah, get into it. This kid has refined his ability of pulling listeners into his tracks which then in turn draw listeners into his mixtape as a whole; you start off saying "okay, imma listen to the first track" and then all of sudden your halfway through the whole tape and completely immersed without realizing it.

And while it would be really easy to compare JTTG's release with his Temple partner The SHRNK's recent beat-tape, I don't thing that would do this tape justice. It's become pretty clear to their fans that their solo work is vastly different from each other, which on the one hand is really cool to hear, but on the other hand is a real challenge when it comes to their next Temple release; because everyone will have clear examples of the two producers' styles and some will be quick to scrutinize who each track seems to be leaning towards. Personally, I'm hoping cohesion will be the name of the game.

And on a side note; how fucking cool is it to give a world such as Masashi Kishimoto's a hip-hop soundtrack to go along with it? All of a sudden the story turns into Samurai Champloo and we have ninja's fighting to spaced-out trap music. Is it taking a dangerous risk? Sure. It's an idea that could've fallen flat on it's face if not executed properly, but it IS executed properly, and would you really rather listen to some generic DatPiff shit instead?