Weekly > Reviews
The Nextmen - This Was Supposed To Be The Future
It’s probably going back three or four years now to when we were just starting out trying to promote our club night, but I was going mental at the time buying vinyl of all kinds, don’t get me wrong I wasn’t buying it for the sake of buying it, on the whole I got some very good stuff. A lot of it though I was getting on recommendations from friends, from snippets i’d heard, reviews in magazines or just from listening to it in HMV.
As I said I generally did well, one album that I bought which I never truly got my head around musically though was The Nextmen album that was around at the time called Get Over It. The hip hop moments within it I generally liked, it was just some of the other more dancehall orientated stuff that really didn’t appeal to me at the time and doesn’t now still if i’m honest.
They have had another album inbetween that release and This Was Supposed To Be The Future, their latest long player, but after my mixed response to Get Over It I left that well alone. When something drops on your door to review though you have a sense of duty almost about reviewing it, which is why despite the fact that I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, I find myself listening to The Nextmen album for the third time as i’m typing this.
Luckily for me they seem to have toned down the dancehall and heavy reggae elements on this one, while that might not be seen as a good thing by all, it means that this album is so much nearer my tastes. So much so that only two tracks don’t really do it for me out of the entire fourteen tracks. Blood Fire is one and the UK garage style track Move really grates on me, but other than that I really do like it.
Let It Roll is a recent single and features the brilliant Alice Russell on vocals, think back to some of the great funk/soul tracks from within the vaults of Warner and Atlantic in the 70’s and you won’t be far off with this one, Did No Wrong is a smokey jazz track, Tuffen Up has a nice laidback groove, wher as Knowledge Be Born is a straight up hip-hop track.
- The Nextmen
- This Was Supposed To Be The Future (2007)
- Category: Album
- Label: Antidote Records
- Reviewed by: Kev
- Published on: 26 Jun 2007
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
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Add to favouritesAnd so it continues throughout, with the styles changing subtely between songs, Something Got You is like a Zero 7-esque track, where as Concentrate is nearer in style to reggae. It’s these changes and the fact that they are all done so well and so smoothly that make it the impressive album it is.
Maybe I ought to dig that old album out and give it another go eh!
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