Iller Than Theirs – Wash Rinse Repeat EP

Album Reviews • Wednesday November 19th, 2008 • 9:48 am

I want a wife/ I love women/ how could I front like I don’t be in love with em?
a little man/ that I could teach/ a little sand/ but not the beach
I figure excess will only bring an excessive amount of fuss/ so when I’m gone
make sure the headstone reads “he did it for us”
-De La Soul’s “Trying People”

Three days after Barack Obama was handed a landslide victory by the American public, he stood in front of the beloved press and announced the economic issue heading up his list of priorities: The Middle Class. It was an acknowledgment that he had ridden into the White House on the backs of average working stiffs.

This “common man” archetype has been used to push many an agenda (Joe the Plumber comes to mind most recently), including the sale of hip-hop records. There seems to be a bubbling undertone amongst hip-hop consumers that detests what Iller Than Theirs refers to as “bloated & phony, boring & corporate, fancy & fashioned, and dead & robotic.” And it is this group’s intention to supply a return to the basics, quelling all fears that Hip-Hop music may not be as recession-proof as we thought.

Comprised of the emcee duo Kray and Tone Tank, Iller Than Theirs is a Brooklyn-based hip-hop group signed with Embedded Records as part of the Definite Jux family. The almost exclusively underground following afforded by the Def Jux affiliation gives Iller space to be themselves. They are artists displaying the working class cavalier antics that made fellow Brooklynites Beastie Boys a hip-hop staple. However that’s primarily a visual comparison. After all, the Beasties were teenagers when Licensed to Ill was released. These are two grown men. Iller takes time to craft rhymes that exhibit both their love for the game, and their discontent with society as a whole. With no shortage of witty freestyle boasting, Iller makes a solid attempt to live up to their name. Once their self-titled debut album has your ear you receive songs like “The Same,” speaking to the evils of a continuously gentrifying Brooklyn.

Fresh off the heels of their debut is an EP equivalent of a television spin-off. Wash, Rinse, Repeat is a 4 track recollection of the final song on their first album. Conceptually the album revolves around the idea of Karma, proposing that all we have built will soon fall and life must start over as the natural order of Earth is restored. More prophetic than apocalyptic, this effort is a foray into orchestral beats and straight-forward rhymes that deserves an honest listen. At times their cadence leaves something to be desired (often quite simplistic), but overall this is a solid outing that will not leave the listener disappointed.

Life moves pretty fast and they say that if you don’t stop to look you could miss it/
but while you’re in it you can’t see it being different/ and every minute is the end of an era/
I know it sounds grim but don’t let it fuck your head up/ you never know tomorrow could be better…
-Iller than Theirs, “Wash, Rinse, Reprise”

Let’s hope so…