“Dame Fortune” by RJD2
RJD2 (Ramble Jon Krohn) has been around for a very, very long time. He found success from these barren, off-kilter, almost hopeless hip-hop instrumentals that lured you in with their bleak eccentricities. On Dame Fortune, however, he couldn’t be much further from the sounds that created him.
This isn’t to say Dame Fortune is lacking due to the sonic left-turn; more than anything he’s flexing a versatile set of production muscles with this record. It jumps from some jazzy, eclectic beats to this long, cinematic orchestral arrangement on the track “PF, Day One,” to what may as well be an Aphex Twin throwaway on the track “A New Theory.”
Where RJD2 finds success on this record is on the more experimental tracks: notably “A New Theory,” and “Your Nostalgic Heart and Lung.” A handful of guest vocalists (and one rapper) also help carry some some of the weight throughout. And while “Up In The Clouds” isn’t the best track we’ve heard RJD2 and Blueprint collaborate on (together they work as hip-hop duo Soul Position), it’s a good cut.
Unfortunately, the genre-bending and lack of coherent theme is this project’s only major downfall. As a whole, it feels like a hastily composed collection of ideas that stand stronger alone than together. The album adds up to less than the sum of its parts, but none of the parts are necessarily broken; they just aren’t quite the right parts for each other. »
– Tyler Sanford
