Schwab – Hall Of Fame Prod. By Tutpiece – Music Review
A beautifully classic hip-hop beat is fused with an uplifting jazz-inspired background for this track. The vibe given off by the sound is peaceful yet quite clearly soaked in depth. The music has a somewhat vintage sound to it, but the vocal has a youth and freshness to it that works really well. The vocal performance is calm, confident, really easy to listen to – one of those voices that you genuinely want to listen to, not somebody wasting lyrics just showing off, not driven by such a desire, more like something that had to be said – in the way that a lot of good art is made.
The production on the track has a similar retro sound to it, but well polished – it sounds great through headphones. The vocal performance seems to sit a little high in the mix, but it’s a minor thing to notice. The tin-can sort of reverb that is just sightly present on the leading voice is actually an effective touch in this case. It keeps up with that vintage sound, and yet it doesn’t overwhelm or take anything away from the meaning and the heart behind the whole track and it’s concept.
The artist has chosen a smooth and very real direction in which to take his music and his sound, and the performance is, as mentioned, flawlessly calm and easy to take on board. You miss a lot of the lyrics in the verse sections the first time round, but fortunately the music is so blissfully crafted that you’re likely to return and pay it some more attention. The hook, on the other hand, strikes you right from the offset. The line about the streets hits again and again, so you take that away from the music when you leave, and that’s a big part of what makes a song successful – the writing is clever enough to repeat crucial lines, just so many times that it stays in your mind after you’ve listened.
By Rebecca Cullen
