Album Review: Pilot Talk II by Curren$y

Sequels are never supposed to outdo the original. It's a longstanding and nearly infallible rule of music and film. But ask any horror-flick nerd and they'll probably tell you that although Friday the 13th is great, Friday the 13th, Part 2 is the real deal. And ask any rap fan to pick between Raekwon's two Only Built 4 Cuban Linx albums, and you might be surprised at the results.

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Near the end of Pilot Talk II, we get something resembling a mission statement from the sleepy-eyed young New Orleans rapper Curren$y: "Kill these beats humane fashion, painless." It's a perfect description of the man's rap style. Curren$y is a great pure rapper, a language addict with a tricky slip-sliding delivery and an ability to keep going for minutes at a time, uninterrupted by choruses. But he's not the type to smash us over the head with his strengths.

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Sometimes a sequel can out?do the original. That's the case with Curren$y's follow-up to Pilot Talk, thanks largely to stepped-up production by Ski Beatz, whose beats sound like a minute hasn't passed since he worked on Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt. As for Spitta, the New Orleans-born rapper is consistent, still flowing like he's got his feet up, firing off relaxed witticisms about a lush lifestyle flooded with money, women, cars and so much weed that he does "Kush ups." The album often finds him surrounded in blaxploitation horns, but he's best in slow-flow mode, as on the ghostly Silence.

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Call it anything but Pilot Talk II, and Currensy’s second effort of 2010 is just straight-up solid, but put this sequel up against the original Pilot Talk -- released just five months previously -- and the nitpicking begins. Some tracks -- the few that barely cross the two-minute mark -- feel like loose ideas or interludes; plus, the overall feel of the album is so blunted, it’s almost a mood piece, designed to provide cerebral hip-hop stoners their perfect soundtrack. That’s not enough to sway the haters, but fans wouldn’t mind if the underground and alternative rap star got ever more fragmented and narrow, and with the smart and innovative Ski Beatz handling the bulk of the production once again, they certainly won’t mind Pilot Talk II.

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With a resume thrice as long as expected from an artist who so recently gained national attention — No Limit Records signee until 2005, Young Money until 2007, dropping a jaw-dropping 10 mixtapes since 2008 earning him a spot on XXL’s vaunted Freshmen ‘10 cover — N.O.’s Hot Spitta has cultivated his corner of the Rap-o-sphere so potently that the aroma defines expectations. His lazy flow and unconventional rhyme schemes and seemingly train-of-thought ramblings have always been the roots of his appeal. It’s what fans appreciate about him first.

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Everyone’s favourite new MC Curren$y returns with a sequel to the critically acclaimed Pilot Talk, which contained some of Hip-Hop’s most smooth and smoked out tracks of 2010. Hailing from New Orleans, Curren$y’s career trajectory has been a roundabout one, being a member of the young money entourage for much of the past decade before branching out to mixtapes and since 2008, fully fledged LPs. His debut LP This Is Not A Mixtape, ostensibly attempted to push Curren$y away from the multitude of mixtape rappers in Hip-Hop and succeeded, largely thanks to Monsta Beat’s production and the laidback MC’ing combining to create the year’s go-to summer album.

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