Attic Crew's family values
If the members of Atlanta rap collective the Attic Crew have their way, the sentiment behind the title of their debut album will soon be a thing of the past. Despite legal and personal hurdles that bogged down its release, the Crew sees Finally... (105 Entertainment) as the first salvo in a long offensive.
"We wanna flood the market," rapper Big Floaty enthuses. "We gonna drop something every quarter. We working on a new Attic Crew album, a couple of solo albums. We never stop working."?
That sounds like an overly optimistic forecast. But it's a boast for which Finally... makes a strong case. Its 64 minutes are crammed with more characters than a Tolstoy novel, tackling numbers like the bouncy "Dope Boi Fresh," the authoritative "Back on the Rack" and the loose, engaging "Bullshit" with an infectious sense of aggression and bonhomie. As such, it's sure to draw comparisons to a similar Atlanta project: the Dungeon Family's 2001 debut, Even in Darkness. But Crew fans will note one obvious difference: The Crew's highest-profile members, the Youngbloodz, are noticeably absent.?
"Trying to clear them through Arista [Records] was hectic," says Big Floaty. "And we had [recording] deadlines to meet."?
Crew member Playboy Tre concurs: "You can bet, from now on, we'll all be on all the albums." ?
But neither member is sweating Youngbloodz' absence from Finally.... "The Attic Crew made Youngbloodz — not the other way around," Tre says of what he sees as only the Crew's first successful offshoot. "What we're doing now is, we're breeding the rest of them."
"We wanna flood the market," rapper Big Floaty enthuses. "We gonna drop something every quarter. We working on a new Attic Crew album, a couple of solo albums. We never stop working."?
That sounds like an overly optimistic forecast. But it's a boast for which Finally... makes a strong case. Its 64 minutes are crammed with more characters than a Tolstoy novel, tackling numbers like the bouncy "Dope Boi Fresh," the authoritative "Back on the Rack" and the loose, engaging "Bullshit" with an infectious sense of aggression and bonhomie. As such, it's sure to draw comparisons to a similar Atlanta project: the Dungeon Family's 2001 debut, Even in Darkness. But Crew fans will note one obvious difference: The Crew's highest-profile members, the Youngbloodz, are noticeably absent.?
"Trying to clear them through Arista [Records] was hectic," says Big Floaty. "And we had [recording] deadlines to meet."?
Crew member Playboy Tre concurs: "You can bet, from now on, we'll all be on all the albums." ?
But neither member is sweating Youngbloodz' absence from Finally.... "The Attic Crew made Youngbloodz — not the other way around," Tre says of what he sees as only the Crew's first successful offshoot. "What we're doing now is, we're breeding the rest of them."