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Album Review: BLACK SWAN: "A Bitter Toast to my Inner Most"
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I met Black Swan on Newbury Street.  After making my morning loot, I travel up Noob and get my Tealuxe or Americano.  I look in Karmaloop, CD Spins, Army Navy, and make my way up to Mass Ave, Cosmic Cafe and Comicopia over at Kenmore.  Usually by the corner of Mass Ave I have met an emcee or a beatmaker.

Today was no different.  I passed a graf dealer on Steve's corner.  Then I met the very animated Black Swan passing out his new CD.  In typical Boston fashion, an artist has poured his soul into a 12 by 12 centimeter treat only to horrify and bewilder passers by who cannot tell the difference between bums, chums, and brothers handing out sugar plums.

Swan gave me a pound, I traded my disc for his disc.  Gave him a mag.  He said he got reviewed in True Mag.  I said that's good news.  He's got another review now.  But first I wanted to tell y'all that peeps are trying to get by, but it's also straight up love out here.  Don't panic.

Next day, I hopped on the bus with my discman.  I always think:  Nice dude, too bad his CD is gonna suck.  >>Not this time, boy.<<  First: Black Swan is a lyrical don!  I was taken at first by the title: A Bitter Toast to my Inner Most.  That's straight up hip hop.  For those who don't know, hip hop ain't an album.  It ain't your gear.  Hip hop is psychological.  The title of that album comes across right away as: this dude's for real.

So I was not disappointed, with that lead-in, that there was at least going to be something catchy on this CD.  My fears that it would be weak production were soon erased.  This disc is an obvious accumulation of lots of hard work dropped down from a lot of different studio tapes and even some direct drops, lovingly transported like holy relix from format to format, the best of the best all put in one silver circle.  People on the sidewalk don't even know.  (The only downside was that some tracks need to be normalized so that the whole disc is loud.)

The Tracks:
  1) Things Have Changed
 Dismisses all doubt.  Serious emcee at work.  Chorus Girl sings a little flat.
  2) Rain
 Annie Lennox Loop.  Listened to this hyper-dirty south track ten times straight.
Homey's got a swan call.  Fucking tight.  Hard to finish the whole review.  Keep pressing repeat.  Help!
  3) Beanstyle
 Hook Track.  Chacka Chacka.  Snatch your breath.  Droppin' deep.
  4) Soul Possession
 Sounds like Chi Coltrane pie-anos.  A Serious banger.  Biographical.  Flawless Lyrics.  Chorus vox sample is outrageous!  Great chipping snare.  Is he singing?!  Ohhhhh Shit!
  5) Domestic
Violence
 Brilliant lyrics.  Track needs more change ups, but it's one of those cases where you can really feel the beat and just flow.  One more round of production.  Chick hook vox are amazing!
  6) Mind Over Body
 Hill Street Blues style keyboard changes with different notes.  Nice warm bass.  Rainy day music, which we need around here.
  7) New Millenium
 Lyrics tight.  A very practiced emcee.  Drum machine track.  Needs E.Q.ing.  Something else in the midrange, more changeups.  Good track, but a filler track.  A few tweaks will bring that up to solid chrome.
  8) Bitter Toast
 I fucking love this track.  This is it, baby.  The title track.  A promise of dopeness fulfilled.  Haunting sample.  Cathedral sounding.  Lyrics are straight love.  Man to woman.   Emcee to listener.  Heart on a plate.  It's right there.  Take it!
  9) Live On Location
 Dropped from a strange source. Needs normalization.  No doubt an excellent track, right now, it's a dim moon orbiting the album.
10) Don't Lie Down
 Quietest track on the album.  Better than track 9.  Oh so dirty harry horn crescendoes on the break downs.  I'm telling you.  This is best song number five.  Dudley Style in there. Lots of best songs on this album.

I am proud to represent this emcee anywhere.  He's got mad projects ahead of himself.  Black Swan aka Shadow aka Mr. Speakitshallbeit.  I know he gets around, but I am so glad this is from Boston.  Emcees will learn to push out sound from all around the country and style mark their shit as being from here.  Swan is plain proof.

Swan shouted out Quinton Tech Productions as beatmakers.  I dunno if they did the whole album, but it must be released at a higher level of commercialism.  D.I.Y. version is on point, (shrinkwraped slimline CD-R) but bring those grafix, inserts, notes, and mastering!