New Release Tuesday

A couple of new albums dropping today, one of which is a no brainer for hip-hop heads. Today marks the release of De La Soul's Plug 1 & Plug 2 Present: First Serve. It's a concept album from Pos and Dave about 2 long-time friends chasing down some big dreams. For the project, Pos and Dave teamed with French producers Chokolate and Khalid and recorded the whole album in Paris.

Now I've only heard bits of pieces but De La has gone the concept route before on De La Soul Is Dead to terrific results and from reading about the album it's described as a "movie on wax" similar to Prince Paul's Prince Among Thieves, which also has me excited as I loved that album. No matter what happens with the story, it's a release from De La and they never miss, so you know you're in for some good hip-hop with this disc.

Release No. 2 is Bottom's Up from Obie Trice. Trice was my favorite artist on Shady Records, but he fell off the map after he and Em split ways (if you want to call it that). I'm glad to see him back, but without the Shady backing and some Dre beats I'm a little bit cautious about this release strictly from a production standpoint. I did hear some of the album and it sounds more like Second Round's On Me than Cheers, so I'll pick it up but not exactly rush out the door to get it. Tracks like "Dear Lord" and "Battle Cry" have that vintage Obie sound and the Eminem assisted "Richard" is decent, but songs like "I Pretend" and "Spend The Day" make me a little hesitant to pick the project up. Then again most hip-hop albums have some R&B-sung filler that doesn't mesh with the rest of the album, so as a fan of Trice, I'll probably just look past it and hit repeat on the good stuff.