With Grief Pedigree Ka brilliantly manifests how contemporary sounds can still carry that classic Hip hop feel. It’s an album. Not another victim of modern day Mixtapeism and definitely no casualty of the overkill of forced music… an actual album. A template of timelessness, and with it the Brownsville MC bodies every insinuation that so much as leans towards the idea that Hip hop is a disposable, ordinary love.

The CD’s 11 tracks are as much as a union as they are unique, each of them having both the strength to stand out and the openness to co-create the Grief Pedigree narrative. The beats are crystal clear, rhythmic contractions of an MC’s heart and Ka has the perfect voice to navigate the pulse of his prose. He’s a storyteller, a Langston in the Hip hop kind of way and the skills behind the precision of his conversational tone are outstanding.

Ka is a one man horn section who, when teaming up with Roc Marciano for the track Iron Age, seemingly effortlessly becomes a brass ensemble and blows yet another anthem. The conclusion of my two day listening session while driving around Amsterdam (the city, not the avenue) is simple: I’m impressed. The Brother from Brownsville is a Renaissance MC and Grief Pedigree is most definitely the work of a writer who isn’t afraid to go back to the page. I’ll write more about Ka’s art later but right now… I just want to get back to my headphones.