MC Chris - MC Chris Is Dead

MC Chris Is Dead is Chris' most entertaining album yet. He's always been funny and had a pretty good flow, but his songs were never as consistently catchy as they are on this record. It's hard to find a bad song by him, but on earlier albums there were usually only a few tracks that were pure joy to listen to, while there are many on this. Overall, it's not significantly better than his earlier work, just a little more pleasing. His beats have always been a bit more creative than most mainstream rap I've heard, but they really stepped up for this one. Really good bass throughout, and quite a bit of computerized hooks to grab your ears. There's even some vocoder use here and there to mix it up a bit. Chris songs have rarely been describable as "cool" before, but a couple like the opening title track and a song about an incident in his youth are as bad as it gets.

A significant part of Chris' appeal to me has always been his lyrics and sense of humor. He doesn't quite reach the heights of the cleverness in some earlier songs like "Tractor Beam" and "Wiid" but he still busts out a ton of great rhymes when needed. One thing that's noticeable is the effort to clean up a bit, as noted in one of the skits, with a distinct lack of F-bombs getting dropped. But as can be heard from the opening lines of "On*", he hasn't completely ditched the dirty thoughts. He has the nerd rap label, but he's almost always limited the geekiness to occasional lyrical nods and a song or two per record, and the topics here range from favorite foods to girls to being an outcast, but not video games or anything. He's still true to his self though, with the still-hilarious skits focusing on a zombie apocalypse brought about by his death on the last album, and dropping references to things like Animal Crossing and Ender's Game. The high voice has never bothered me, and I see Chris as one of the most entertaining rappers working today.