I don't listen to much hip-hop/rap, but every year, I fall in love with at least one or two hip-hop albums. For the past few months, Together/Apart by Grieves has been playing a lot on my ipod (it sounds better through headphones vs speakers.) There is something about Together/Apart that is quite compelling—it's probably the autobiographical aspects in Grieves' lyrics. They are sincere, personal and very relatable. Right from the first track, "Lightspeed" takes the listener to various points of Grieves' childhood/adolesence—some are random and some are significant. I personally like the random narratives: "Back then it was all about laughs / Hit the corner store for the new Fleer packs..."; "Time past and the friends found punk yah / Oh whatever man a lot of it was junk / But we loved it made us feel cool little dumb kids / Running round just for fun doing dumb shit..." Meanwhile, Grieves' tales are backdropped by the smooth and minimalistic production by Budo. The multi-instrumentations of piano, drum machine, trumpet, etc. are absolutely perfect; yet, the album sounds far being overproduced. I discover something new/fascinating every time I listen to Together/Apart, for that, I predict it will have tremendous lasting appeal... and I also predict that Together/Apart will appear again in my albums of the year list!
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