Rating:
  Review Date: April 22, 2007
  Website: XL Website
  Label: Independent

XL “Xclusive” Album Review
I realized something about myself this week homie. I’m a prejudice person yo. Now a lot of cats mistake being prejudice with being racist. But I’m obviously not a racist … I’m just prejudice. The word prejudice is basically a sum of it’s two parts: pre- and -judge. This means that a prejudice person pre-judges, or judges a person or situation before he even knows anything about it. That’s what I did earlier this week when I started listening to XL’s album “Xclusive.”

This album has some bumping Dirty South style production. XL utilizes a lot of horns, electric guitars, and myriad other instruments to create great head-nodding beats to rhyme over. And upon first listening to the album, it sounded very radio-friendly to me. Now knowing what I know about what radio-friendly music normally consists of, I was quick to judge XL … assuming that his lyrical content would be similar to the bullshit we hear on the radio. However, I quickly found out how wrong I was.

Whenever I listen to the radio, I’ve gotta admit that I’m feeling a lot of the beats I hear. I always think to myself that those cats could do so much more with great production if they just applied some intelligent lyrics to their beats. However, you seldom find this among radio-friendly tracks. XL does a magnificent job filling the gaps by laying heartfelt introspective lyrics over club-banging Dirty South beats, and gives us an idea of what radio songs could sound like if those cats could actually rhyme.

This is a great underground release that keeps your head nodding and mind thinking all at the same time with radio and club-friendly beats, substance-filled lyrical content, and overall unique style and approach. I guess that hip-hop doesn’t have to be stupid to be radio-friendly, despite whether or not the Clear Channel Playlists give it any love. Either way, I could see XL gaining a wide array of public acceptance if just given the chance.

I highly recommend checking out XL and his debut solo album “Xclusive.” Don’t make my mistake and be prejudice against radio-friendly music, because there are obviously cats that can represent it correctly. Just give it a listen and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Peace.

Album Track Listing:

1. Entrance
2. Xclusive
3. Don’t Be Late
4. They Ain’t Me
5. Thug Hunter
6. Where U From
7. Headz Up
8. Ready
9. Lyfe
10. Deception
11. Capital Hill
12. Dats Wsup
13. Tha Getdown
14. You Lost!
15. That Ish
16. The Twilight Zone
17. From Myself
18. What Have We Come To
19. Music To My Soul
20. Say Goodnight