Although “No One Knows You” was made known in 2008, I’m still feeling the impression it made from our introduction last year. As the album that lead me to Shawn Chrystopher, the self admitted “Cornel West of the West”, it performs a heart transplant on a hip hop style that had earlier procedures done by The Neptunes, Kanye West, and Lupe Fiasco among many others. What aligns Chrystopher with them is his way he creates a persona that assumes the role of Superfly in the soundscape. What distances him from them is his other role as Saint Anthony in the…

This is probably not news to most of you but for the rest I urge you to allow a certain rapper to take you on a flight that is high in multiple senses. This pilot of course is Curren$y a.k.a. Hot Spitta, a New Orleans smooth operator who along with Ski Beatz as the main man among many producers, puffs a suave sound brimming with smoke laced jazz into the room.

While some of the tracks themselves fizzle out, the theme of laid back langour gives the album its due cool. That along with conspicuous and nicely consistent references to…