Rating:
  Review Date: August 19, 2008
  Website: Vast Aire Website
  Label: One Records

Vast Aire “Dueces Wild” Album Review
I haven’t reviewed an album in more than one month now. It’s not that I haven’t been listening to hip-hop, it’s just that I haven’t felt like sitting down and writing about hip-hop. Well, I recently got the urge to pick up the ol’ pen again, and of all the albums I’ve bumped in the past six weeks, one deserves more recognition than the rest: Vast Aire’s “Dueces Wild.” This album has been in my regular rotation since it dropped at the end of June, and it definitely deserves a shout out on the website.

People who know me often seem surprised when I talk about Vast in the high regard that I do. I guess if you run a website dedicated to socially conscious lyricism, people erroneously expect you to only appreciate emcees that critique culture, society and politics with their rhymes. However, if there’s one thing that I continue to appreciate just as much, it’s purely unique god-given rhyme skills and ridiculously innovative verbal wordplay. And as I mentioned in the review for Mighty Joseph’s “Empire State,” I can’t think of anyone who has any more of that than Vast Aire.

After listening to “Dueces Wild,” it’s pretty evident that Vast is well aware of this natural rhyming ability he appears to have been given at birth. At one point in the album, Vast proclaims, “When God made rap he came to me and said ‘What you wanna do?’ I said do this.” Later in Take Two, he tells a little story about his birthdate:

Come on dude I was born to rap/
When delivered I had a rhyme and the doctors clapped/
The nurse beatboxed/
Harmonizing while the cradle rocked/

“Dueces Wild” pretty much consists of verse after verse of funny, amusing, entertaining content. In Back 2 Basics, Vast claims “I’m not a rapper, I just talk a lot.” And that line almost perfectly characterizes his rhyme style. A good example can be found in T.V. Land, one of my favorite tracks in which Vast tells a hilariously creative hip-hop story about witnessing a fight in T.V. Land.

Hell up in Harlem uptown Saturday night/
Foxy Brown and Claudine had a fight/
And even though it was awful/
It got a little worse once they jumped Sparkle/
Black Caesar fell out the wagon/
But he can switch his hand like Into the Dragon/
Superfly running shit like a gentleman/
Cleopatra Jones smacked Lady Heroin/
Bad Ass got mad ‘cause he lost his hat/
That dude’s a bad mutha – stop that!/
He smacked a girl/
Back flipped her, rocked her world/
And then he went for Cornbread Earl/
He choked him out, had him in a headlock/
We was like ‘What Judo does he got?’/
You know my style is Bulletproof/
Like Clark Kent when he slips out of the phone booth/
We had to bounce – we did the Hollywood Shuffle/
I kissed my girl, she was like ‘I love you’/
Hopped out the car/
Checking my body for scars/
That’s when me and my brother saw the Drug Czar/
It was Willie Dynamite/
He just left the fight/
He was like ‘It wasn’t me, I was here all night’/
Then he pulled out, and he shot my brother/
Hopped in the car, ‘I’m gonna get you suckers!’/

Another great example is in The Dynamic Duo, a track based on comic figures where Vast somehow manages to clown on virtually every superhero or villain he could fit into one verse.

Life’s a card game of the illest poker/
And I ain’t gonna fold until I get the Joker/
A Dark Knight like Bram Stoker/
And when I see the Catwoman, I’ma stroke her/
And tell Super Boy he’s a super toy/
I’m Theodore Wayne – the real McCoy/
It’s a bird, it’s a plane!/
No it’s Lois Lane giving me brains/
She game to Gotham to write a story/
I told her ‘Put the pen down, show me the panties’/
Peter Parker can’t do shit to me/
I’m Vast Man with a capital V/
But to my avail there was Vicki Vale/
Trying to seduce me/
Doing the Vast twosie/
I told her to slow down/
She wanted to sleep like a bat – upside down/
Well, I can arrange that/
And that’s when the Riddler started to clown/
He was like ‘It’s my time’/
But the crowd didn’t know I co-wrote his rhymes/
The Green Hornet is always smoking me out/
But I keep my space ‘cause he’s a Two-Face/
I’m smacking the Penguin when he gets greedy/
Just flash LXG when you need me/

Vast Aire’s “Dueces Wild” is stacked with these types of verses – rhymes that make you laugh in amusement and stare in bewilderment at the same time. I would quote them all if I only had time. I know the album’s been out for a while, but if you haven’t picked it up yet, now is the time. “Dueces Wild” is easily one of the must have albums of 2008. Peace.

Album Track Listing:

1. You Know (You Like It)
2. T.V. Land
3. Take Two
4. Dynamic Duo feat. Geechi Suede
5. Gimme Dat Mic feat. Copywrite
6. Mecca and the Ox feat. Vordul Mega
7. Back 2 Basics
8. Lunch Room Rap (It’s Nothing)
9. When Starz Fall – Double A.B., Karniege, Swave Sevah, Thanos, Vast Aire
10. Crush
11. Shu (The God of Aire)
12. Graveyard Shift feat. Genesis
13. Man Without Fear