Ca'lam, damn it's been a minute. Your vocals are clear, your reverb is a little too high on that pocket change on the verses, its lifting you from the beat a little too much. Seems to be a preset for you cuz it's the same on all these tracks. You'd gain a whole lot of body in your vocals if you EQ'd your lows and mids more for your verses. Your preset for the hooks (being that there's a lot of singing) is on point. Your lyrics still tak a concious effort to make out due to the EQing as mentioned before, turnign dow nthe reverb and bringing up the mids and lows would completely turn that around. You have the makings of a real harmonic hip hop type seeing that you sing, it's to some extent liek a smooth jazz type of hip hop, and I can easily visualize someone playing through a CD of yours at a contemporary art show or say ...a wedding and in places that people are in a hip hop type of cultural vibe but normally wouldn't play hip hop at all you'd get spins there. Matter fact, I can think of more than a few art shows my brother's put on that I could se this playing at and people going 'damn..who's this?". The phase pan on When pigs fly is too overt from ear to ear, you'd want it a little more subtle on that synth so people slightly hear it, so it doesnt' become an effort on their ears after a whole song worth of wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah back and fourth. Or another alternative is that when the synth first hits, have it start in one ear and slowly pan to the other as the tone progresses, then on the next, fades back in the other direction and so on.

One thing that I noticed is that even after listening and analyzing the songs, with the exception of Pocket Change I'm really not sure what your topics are. I think you'd aboslutely explode if you did visionary type tracks or more conceptual tracks where you're speaking to someone specific or about something specific. I don't often say this, but I think you and a professional conceptual song writer would have the makings of a run away music career. The right A&R would would fall out his seat laughin if your CD slid across his desk cuz he'd see how to align the pieces and make you a household name on tour with Jill Scott and Flowetry, and doing collabs with Maxwell and D'Angelo and a Mos Def cameo. You have some "lyrical" tracks and some collabs on your page, but I'm tellin ya man, lol don't even waste your time with that man that's way beneath what you can do, and after some massaging on your vocals, playing to your strengths and aiming at the right crowd would pay off for you BIG TIME. And I mean BIG TIME.

Your target audience is mature adults that are older and wiser now, and beyond the "rap" phase but still got that culture in em and just want to listen to something smoother. I can see this playing in the Caddy easily, like the sound track to unwind to. This is that plush leather seat music, ya feel? It's music for the grown. music for the trendy, the new young contemporary corporate america with fat pockets music.


Apexx

__________________