Staff Reviews

themselves - CrownsDown

Review by Alexander Tudor

DoseOne reunites Anticon's finest for the first Themselves record in seven years. Rivalling Why? (his old partner in cLOUDDEAD) for work ethic and all round genius, this is another essential Anticon release. »

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seven months after the release of 'thefreehoudini' - the celebrated mixtape that announced themselves' return - doseone and jel drop 'crownsdown', a careful and vicious exhibition of mastered rap tactics and sampling ethics. themselves' third album proper has been gestating in the gut of this seminal group for some time. it's both a return to form and a honing of what's come before (subtle, clouddead, deep puddle) - both the opus that these lionhearted two were always meant to make, and the album that their hip-hop-obsessed teenaged selves always hoped to hear. on 'crownsdown', themselves hold back nothing, welding brute skill to a concrete
set of tracks that represents an essential ten commandments of rap. in preparation, doseone and jel revisited their beloved hip-hop collections (gang starr, ultramagnetic mcs, public enemy, saafir) and whittled down the recurring themes that made their favourite records so sturdy. each song on 'crownsdown' represents one of these archetypes - you'll find the don't bite' song, the diss track, the story rap, the 'bootleggers beware' song, and the 'don't fuck with my dj' jam, among others. in this way, themselves revisit something classic in order to invent their own future-school entry to the annals.
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