Blazo's Alone Journey is a bit of an oddity. It is, I suppose, an instrumental hip-hop album. However, there is nary a skanky beat, cheesy 808 "cowbell", Funky Drummer break, Amen Brother break, or any of a multitude of cliché techniques to be found. Blazo instead opts for a remarkably elegant approach, laying down beats that are no less bumpin' than their oversexualized contemporaries underneath string arrangements that border on orchestral. I swear you'll hear a bit of oboe, clarinet, maybe even a french horn in the mix a few times over the course of this album, underneath the achingly lush strings that make this album so lovely to begin with. These tracks are confident and groovy yet undeniably sentimental. To be quite frank, this is one of those albums that you get queued up just as you're about to walk out the door pretty late on a warm summer night for a pleasant stroll around suburbia, and as your foot hits the pavement outside your front door, the first beat drops and you can't help but think, "Awww, shit yeah" as you get that added swagger to your step in an almost Saturday Night Fever-esque way. Just look at the cover art. Look at the title. I pride myself in thinking that I've found precisely the scenario the album was meant for.
Yeah dude.
