Hyro Da Hero
Birth School Work Death
Release Date: Apr 4, 2011
Genre(s): Rap, Pop/Rock
Record label: Stereo Bang
Music Critic Score
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Album Review: Birth School Work Death by Hyro Da Hero
Excellent, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
Rap rock is easily one of the most maligned forms of heavy music ever. And deservedly so: For every Rage Against the Machine, there seems to be a thousand shitty Limp Bizkit-wigger-wannabes or crunkcore Biebers-gone-bad. Part of the reason why most rap rock sucks so much is probably because it always seems to be the rockers who are adopting the rap tropes, not the rappers (Lil Wayne, not respecting) picking up guitars and cranking the distortion—and if you can't really rap in the first place, your rap rock is pretty much destined to blow.
Based on rating 8/10
Rap-rock never sounded so good... Self-described as ‘gangsta rock’, Hyro Da Hero fuses rap, punk and rock, but shuns sampling for a backup band comprising members of At The Drive-In and The Blood Brothers. Naturally, the lyrics are Hyro’s main draw, deconstructing the modern hip-hop scene from materialism and artificial status on ‘We Still Popular’, until its soul, passion and forward-thinking ethos resurfaces on ‘A Conversation With Hip-Hop’.
Opinion: Excellent
The knock on rap-rock has traditionally been that its main strength is also its primary weakness: a lumbering, brontosaurean power that seems to naturally lend itself to the lunkheaded gesture. But music has evolved several lifetimes beyond the ’90s/’00s renaissance of hard-rocking hip-hop, and there’s no better example of this new sophistication than Hyro Da Hero. Much of the material on his proper debut, produced by Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot), uses as its base the Southern rap beloved in his native Houston, with its clockspring-tense hi-hats and Geiger counter snares.
Opinion: Excellent
Texan rapper rocks out with some pedigree punks on a fresh and vibrant debut LP. Raziq Rauf 2011 A criticism often applied to rap-rock records is that the rock accompanying the rap is regularly a dull bludgeon compared to that normally associated with a cutting-edge fusion of genres. The implication being that the rap-rock in question is far from innovative; that the music is, in fact, cheap and dull.