Injury Reserve - Live From The Dentist Office (Album Review)

It's been a while since groups like The Cool Kids, PacDiv, and U-N-I dominated the underground rap community. Those groups got the tag "hipster hop" thrown on them. Channeling some of the classic rap vibes and adding culture and lifestyle those groups really came out strong and were in a lot of ways the first big wave of "internet rappers". I haven't heard a group in a while that channeled those vibes as perfectly as those groups did. Enter the new album from Injury Reserve titled Live From The Dentist Office.

This album channels that classic sound mixed with current vibe perfectly in a way that just can't be rivaled with even from a lot of releases I've heard this year. Yeah, there are the hard edges. "Friday (feat. Curtis Williams)" features some light vibes for a Friday that transitions into darker sounding territory both musically and lyrically as the song progress. "Whiplash" features Chuck Inglish (The Cool Kids) and his addition works really well with the style. The beat is tailor made for his rapping style. "Ttktv" features some really good R&B sung vocals over a smooth beat. It has some interesting down pitched vocals underneath the singing. Midway through the song some distorted raps pops up in the song and it adds a lot of texture and feeling to the song. The beat takes some neat twists and turns all the way through. The minor things added in and the pacing is fantastically done. The album has great production and the beats transition and flow really smoothly. It's one of the most standout things about this album and it leads the album in such a cool way. I'm a fan of about 99% of the core beat work and transitions throughout this album. It's above and beyond more cohesive than what you hear on a lot of projects. That coupled with the above average rapping and singing make the album a win on multiple levels.

With this album you're going to have a lot of fun, be treated to an extremely well produced album, and hear one of the better rap albums that have been released this year. I get heavy PacDiv and U-N-I vibes when I listen to this. If you've been missing artists similar to that then you are going to eat this up. If you're a fan of rappers like Chance The Rapper and Action Bronson you'll probably find a lot to enjoy about this one. This group easily deserves to be on anyone’s music radar. This is a pretty stellar debut album.