Right at the beginning of my first semester of college, OutKast released
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Before midterm exams, pretty much everyone I knew had either bought or burned the double CD set. One astute friend took one listen to the mostly instrumental intro on the
Speakerboxxx disc and shared this thought: “Damn! If they’re going to use a beat that nice just for the intro, what is the
rest of this thing going to be like?”
I get a similar kind of feeling putting on
Resplendent, the new collaborative EP by Negro Justice and Gee Slab. The four short-and-sweet tracks don’t really give the pair space to do much more than set the scene, but it’s a story you want to hear more of. In the tense and grooving opener “No Introduction,” Justice takes a sobering look at what it’s like being forced between a rock and a hard place, as he raps, “Is jail better than chalk residue outlining my flesh?”