D.P. - Bar Tab Blues

As modern hip-hop disappears up its own arse in a self-indulgent fug of Auto-tune, medallions, slick whips and giant egos, it’s refreshing to find someone who sounds like he simply wants to get in front of a crowd to sing, rap and play his piano in a relaxed fashion. As D.P. says in Simple Dude, ‘Gimme that brew, gimme that weed, a little bit of ass is all that I need.’ Who can argue with that? D.P.’s fast-paced delivery is defiantly uncommercial and dextrous, something like a calmer Louis Logic perhaps. The problem is, there are 17 tracks, and they really start to become indistinguishable towards the end. They mostly follow a similar ‘looped piano chord, beats start, rapping starts, singy chorus’ formula, and as a result some of the observant and pertinent rhymes become lost in the mix. D.P.’s clearly a man of talent, but perhaps he needs a little more variation on his palette.[Euan Ferguson]