Rating:
  Review Date: June 17, 2007
  Website: Andromeda Website
  Label: Elephant Audio Recordings

Andromeda “Blue Collar Music” Album Review 
I know, I know … I can just hear what y’all fools are saying already. “That cat at Hip-Hop Linguistics is always talking about slavery,” right? In our review for Jedi Mind Tricks’ “Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell,” we pointed to China’s unfair labor practices, the disproportionately black, Latino and lower class military, and America’s prison-industrial complex as examples of modern day slavery. In our review for Brother Ali’s “The Undisputed Truth,” we created a simple four-step backtrack to help our readers realize not only how recent slavery in this country actually was, but also how clearly it still affects us today.

And now, with the help of Andromeda and their exceptional underground release “Blue Collar Music,” we have come to realize another example of the existence of modern day slavery: America’s blue-collar workforce.

I see it every single day on the subway … “corporate sharecroppers” traveling to and from work, both socially and economically dependent on a way of life that is, as Andromeda might say, “based on corporate greed, corruption, and disregard for all life.” I see cats reading their New York Times, looking at the stock market numbers and saying blind shit like, “The economy is booming, dogg!” As if the NASDAQ, Dow Jones or other “economic indicators” had anything to do with the well being of the common man.

Damn, it continues to amaze me how our corporate-controlled system can continue to brainwash people into believing that what’s good for them is also good for us. In reality, it’s not. And Andromeda makes that clear off jump with the following chorus to the album’s opening title track:

It’s the blue-collar worker: America’s new slave
Do the most important job but still don’t get paid
Enough to live the American dream
In the wealthiest land we live in poverty

But the two talented emcee/producers don’t stop there. “Blue Collar Music” is a full-length album based on the experiences and dedicated to the struggles of America’s blue-collar worker, and in the process succeeds in being one of my personal top underground releases of the year thus far. Every song seems to capture a different element of the common man’s experience, wrapped around creatively unique head-nodding beats, skilled flows and intellectually stimulating lyrics.

Blue Collar Music
A Slave’s Portion contemplates the inadequacies of a blue-collar family’s often insufficient and unwholesome diets while speculating on the long-term health problems such diets can create. Rent Money examines the mind state of a person struggling from paycheck to paycheck to pay the monthly bills. The Great Depression gives a step-by-step description of the mental and spiritual breakdown that can be a result of daily labor, little pay, and the inability to provide for oneself.

Overtime provides a storytelling account how being forced to work overtime and constantly hustle for money can lead to relationship problems. Invisible Man is a track dedicated to the hard working blue-collar man who takes care of his family, studies at night and tries to make a better world for himself and his loved ones, and how society often fails to recognize his efforts. And Conversation With A Nation is a brilliantly mixed and sampled series of quotes and excerpts that unapologetically forces the listener to acknowledge a history of American racist dialogues from all angles.

Each and every track on “Blue Collar Music” contains some inherent genius, whether through new and innovative sounds, samples, and beats, aggressive rhyme patters and techniques, or knowledge-filled lyrics and themes. And with the addition of multiple comic interludes, most pulled from Aaron McGruder’s animated television series “The Boondocks,” “Blue Collar Music” becomes the perfect example of hip-hop edutainment, providing reality-based education in the form of dope hip-hop.

I highly recommend checking out Andromeda and their spectacular album “Blue Collar Music.” If you’re part of the 91% of Americans who break their backs everyday competing for some 25% of the nation’s wealth, then this album is actually about you. Listen to it and see how you can relate. Peace.

Album Track Listing:

1. Newsflash
2. Blue Collar
3. A Slave’s Portion
4. That Sound
5. Motivation
6. Rent Money (feat. Rashonda Muckelroy)
7. The Great Depression
8. Overtime
9. The Pen
10. The Original
11. Wildstyle
12. Invisible Man
13. Focal Point
14. Second String
15. Tough Talk
16. Kings
17. Conversation With A Nation