'Mental Disorder' - Jester J (album review)

If you like jokes, good rhymes and funky forward thinking beats then sample Jester J’s debut album ‘Mental Disorder’ out now on Organised Mess. You can download it for free or you can buy the CD for a fiver. I’d advise the latter ‘cause we all need a CD with a picture of a poo on it don’t we?

Subject wise there’s a lot of studenty, drugsy talk as well as thoughts on the amount of Hip Hop artists compared to Hip Hop fans. There’s a track about driving (‘Driving Around’) that doesn’t follow the usual rims and woodgrain dash talk of our US friends – it’s more much more realistic – one of my favourites. Raps about the everyday grind of a 9 to 5 and piss taking lyrics about guns etcetera are present amongst the general tongue in cheek lyricism.

The production, shared between Organised Mess and Raven beats are nicely diverse with foreign sounding grooves (‘Comedown King’) rubbing up against choral, enya-like soundscapes (‘Lost Mines’) and digital bleeps (‘Targets’ and ‘Note To Self’) sharing the hour with theatrical bangers (‘Run’ ft. Scott Sprite). Traditional Hip Hop is also catered for but the variety is the spice of this CD.

Although there may be a couple too many tracks with similar themes, ‘Mental Disorder’ is a strong release from a guy who doesn’t take Hip Hop too seriously all of the time. I would recommend it to likeminded folk.