freedom sold reviews
Fanatic Promotion
Spring 2001
Freedom Sold is Art and Kwam, a hip hop duo bent on infecting minds. The last recording to come out of Houston's ClubSafeParking (home of the LSD laced sounds of Schrasj), Freedom Sold's second record is all about lyrics - 70 minutes of vocal interplay best taken in small bites.
Urbansmarts
Spring 2001
You might just not be ready for what this album has in store for you. While at first you will be taken aback by the place of origin (Texas) and pretty much everything else, like the name, cover design, and the first few sounds, that's just the steep climb that will get you to the peak. And with the altitude comes the less oxygen, that will get you somewhat lightheaded, and that's pretty much part of what this album is able to achieve, while at the same time resisting to be pulled back by the heavy content. Yes, the name Freedom Sold makes you suspect that this will not be something of the regular, but that you might want to hit that 'on' button to activate your brain. Now the labeling of the tracks is made useless as suddenly a credited 14 happens to become an actual 16. That's why we shall leave naming the tracks to the side for now, giving you the pleasurable fun of comparing the descriptions to the actual track, and bringing together the matching two. Actually no, why we shall still mention the numbers as seen on your CD player.
The first track starts guitary and yes, at times this album is too guitary. It then changes into something more used to, if you have previously embraced music you haven't been used to. Simply stated, this is ridding itself from what a broad previously paved path wants you to walk upon and "1" states that Kwam the lyrical half is a 'bad example for the youth of America', as he does not cheer and jump once told, and as he takes what is expected to be good and finds the bitter taste within the sweetness. Spacey sounds are preparing the end, before they are elaborated on "2", a track starting with the scratching of Spaceghost (the other half). And the track remains like that.
An excerpt of a poem opens "3", that gets as regular as these two cats are likely to get. It takes a symbol for the lurking shadow, and that of course is just more symbolism. "4" features a not too complementary reversed burping type sound and the horn is like a moaning back ache. The thoughtful outburst becomes self righteous, as it being a continuity. However, we have to brace ourselves as the quite possibly best track comes next with "5". The beat is just incredible with the atmospheric layers. Everything works perfectly together, with giving the life attached lyrics the musical seriousness they deserve. This should get as much hoopla as any of those artists that proclaim the demise of the cumulus.
Unfortunately the path is going downhill on "6", not because of the funky old school drum, but because of pretty much every other sound that's featured in this beat. That's why our focus wanders forward to "7", that reclaims our props, despite it sounding mid 90s to an extend. What just might be intended. Again making the units of this album epic, "8" refuses to unfold for less than seven minutes. This lives off of the insanity in the background and is held back by the not yet changed delivery, what still ads up to an exciting clash of what you inevitably will be drawn into. Then the guitary sounds are making up the short piece of "9" that gains psychedelic proportions with the dope drum programming. It's still over before it even started, what then shoves "10" in front of us. Maybe this is one of those tracks that if separated from the rest doesn't amaze, but remaining within the pack, it is part of the sum that is larger than its elements.
The oddness then finally gains the upper hand on "11", and is just twisting and turning into dizziness. A little too hectic to be calming "12" is just progressing with the despair we feel in the mental state we have been pushed in. The chirping laughs at us, hiding the lyrics in the back, that are becoming part of the musical mush, that feels like an under influence reception. Masterfully done though, it makes it possible to alienate enough to only keep those around that are making the effort or got too hurt to get up and flee the incoming. So without a glitch or so much of a sand corn bump, Freedom Sold are continuing to keep us bondaged with listenable favors. And yes, Kwam isn't the illest, he does not try to be the illest too, because this is taking him beyond the beats and rhymes with his sprit pouring over the outcome and his ingredients giving this the distinctive taste. That's also the flavor of the unneeded, as too guitary parts of "14".
And as we have been picked up and made to move forward from more regular complexness, the way this closes the grasp on us, it's only logical, that "15" chokes our exhaling and another 9 minute long track "16" is over killing our resistance. As again the guitars are totally torturing us, they are finishing the job off, while we shall end this with a nod to courage and the illness that it took Freedom Sold to complete such a task
Houston
Press
January 11, 2001
By Elizabeth Taishoff
With its first EP, Whores, Freedom Sold burst on the local scene as a hip-hop act with heart, soul and focus. Disappointingly, these characteristics are all but absent on the duo's latest project, Ten Years Four Walls. An indecipherable mixture of static and electronic noise and banal, incoherent ramblings, the album, we can only hope, is a momentary stagnation from an otherwise promising band.
Lacking the direction and focus it displayed on Whores, the band puts ruthless energy into this sonic document about the nonstruggle of the common man. "Struggle is glorified," the band writes in the liner notes, "but how many people truly struggle in their lives?" The duo raises an interesting question, but sadly it makes for a lousy album.
Random noise-scapes litter the project, and tracks meander from one angry, directionless lament to another, saying little in the end. Apparently an attempt to make Freedom Sold more attractive to a wider audience, this recording is practically guaranteed to do just the opposite: to alienate even those who purchased the debut release. For all the negative commentary, however, the band does have some shining moments on the 16-track CD, particularly when the aggressive, jangly electronic sounds and embittered lyrics give way to a mellow, jazzy riff and smooth, sensual beats. Songs like "Kids with Gunz" exemplify a style promulgated by DJ Shadow on his 1996 disc, Endtroducing. Freedom Sold is original and inventive, as opposed to loud and overproduced, when it sticks with its signature style.
The band's greatest flaw is its musical waffling. While hip-hop is itself postmodern in concept -- the breaking down of a musical form to its barest element and then re-creating it as a new concept -- the kind of sound Freedom Sold creates is not exactly hip-hop. It is a mess caught somewhere in between electronic noise and rap over produced beats.
In the end, neither of the band's recordings comes close to capturing its live show, which is pure energy and raw emotion. Mesmerizing to behold in person, Freedom Sold puts on the kind of show that leaves audiences breathless and begging for more.
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