Album Review: The Alumni – “Perfect Man”

The Alumni – “Perfect Man”
Release: 2011
Reviewed by: Ed Welch
Rating: 7.3 (Out of 10)
[xrr rating=7.3/10]

The Alumni (with group members, Sevr1 and Madik), is a new group to me. Representing Christ (and coming out of New Mexico), these brothers bring a really good message for their fourth full length project titled “Perfect Man”.  This isn’t your average rap duo. With music that is crossing over into Christian Rock radio, they still present a hip-hop flavored foundation, mixed with some guitars/rock and sometimes even a “Pop-ish” kind of feel. In short, I like it.

Almost the entire album is produced by Madik and I have to give a “thumbs up”, because a lot of times when one person produces a whole project, the album starts to become predictable, or worse, boring after awhile. But that’s not the case at all. Madik keeps it fresh and diverse. The beats didn’t blow me out of the water or anything and some are better than others, but he did an overall great job.  The only major exceptions would be “Love” which bored me sonically, but that could be more personal preference than anything else. The only beat that actually bugged me a little was “Hip Hop Night”. At first I thought one of the salt shakers was off beat, but a closer listen made me realize it’s the kick drum. It hits a hair too soon at the top of each measure (if I remember correctly). I know that seems small, but small rhythmic issues can easily pull your attention. It seems like Madik had a lot of beats that had a marching kinda feel with a simplistic kick, snare, kick, snare sound, but they make it work for the most part.

Madik and Sevr1 bring nice wordplay to the table. With that compliment out there, I have to say that sometimes their flow was extremely predictable. Don’t get me wrong, they flow very well with the beat, but once they jump into a style there wasn’t a lot of variation and if I couldn’t guess what they were going to say, I could definitely tell you how they were going to say it. But hey, if you like the style, I guess that’s not a bad thing is it? 😉  I appreciate the singing on the album. No they aren’t master vocalists or anything, but neither is Andre 3000 and that hasn’t stopped him yet. I say that to say that’s how their singing came across. I’d never expect them to do any complicated runs, but what they do is nice for the message they’re bringing. It came across as genuine, even artistic. Even though I wasn’t familiar with this group, I can tell that they’ve been working together for a long time, because what they do as individuals flow extremely well together. Awesome job!

I really appreciate the reality of this project. They were transparent on this album and talk about love and relationships and bring it all back to Christ. “Perfect Man” is definitely one of my favorite songs and I love it when a title track stands out. Other songs that stood out to me (in a good way) were songs like “We Are One” and “Just Another Episode”.

In short, the project is pretty catchy. The wordplay is there, just predictable. Overall the hooks are catchy, the beats are nice, and I really enjoyed the content. They may never be perfect men, but I give ‘em extra credit for striving.  😉  But hey, everybody is a critic.  I’m just the guy who wrote the review.  Peace and much love.

Comprehensive Ratings:

Music                           7
Flow                            6.5
Lyricism                       7
Content                        7.5
Creativity                      7
Credibility                     7
Personality                    8
Presentation                  8
Overall Production        7
Potential Impact            8