Album Review: Life's Quest by Eightball

8Ball :: Life's QuestEntertainment One MusicAuthor: Pete T.8Ball's a regional hero and an underground legend, a veteran of two decades and a Southern innovator responsible for putting Memphis on the hip hop map. After three albums on Suave House Records in the mid-1990s, Ball and his partner-in-rhyme MJG elected to try their hand on the solo tip, and 8Ball's 1998 solo debut "Lost," a double-disc blockbuster on Suave House, became something of a cult classic. As a solo artist, though, he's never quite been in the right place at the right time.

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A super chill, surprisingly reflective record, Life's Quest is an almost conceptual effort by rapper 8Ball, concentrating and concerned with the ups and down experienced in everyone and anyone's life, although still interrupted here and there by some straight-up baller music. The finest interruption comes first with 8Ball's usual cohort, MJG, joining on "We Buy Gold," which adds Big K.R.I.T. to the mix for a true pimp song that mentions Al Green, super models, and beaches in Rio.

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“You can never tell how close you are. It may be nearer when it seem so far. So stick to the fight when your heart is hit. It’s when things go wrong… that you should never quit.” Over bare keys, underground legend Premro “8 Ball” Smith opens Life’s Quest with “Indestructible,” a highs and lows tale of overcoming odds.

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LAST month the veteran Memphis rapper 8Ball released “Life’s Quest” (eOne), an album that, from a distance, appeared relatively low profile but up close proves to be modest and warm in a way that feels like a surprise. First there’s the production, which is contemplative and sometimes lush but never brittle or bombastic, as is the vogue for so much Southern hip-hop of the day. It’s casual, and it breathes easily.

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