Hilltop Hoods: State of the Art
Editorial
2003 was the great leap forward; thanks to Hilltop Hoods's third album, The Calling, local hip hop made it out of the suburbs and onto national radio. While the album was released to little fanfare, tracks like Testimonial Year, Nosebleed Section</> and Dumb Enough were picked up by Triple J and the album took on a life of it's own. Twelve months later, The Calling was certified platinum, the first local hip hop act to achieve that feat.
Sorry for the history lesson, but it helps put the group's latest (fifth) studio album in perspective. In a nutshell, Hilltop Hoods dragged the whole hip hop scene forward with their 2003 release, and they did it again with 2007's The Hard Road Restrung. The thing is, lightning rarely strikes twice (let alone three times), and State of The Art, for all its swagger, is more a refinement than anything radically different.
Sure, there are standout moments - Fifty in Five and Classic Example (featuring the legendary Pharoahe Monch) being particularly notable - but this feels quite similar to The Hard Road in many places. Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing and fans will certainly lap this up. At the end of the day, Hilltop Hoods are still the country's best hip hop act.
Tracks:
1. The Return
2. Super Official
3. Chase That Feeling
4. She's So Ugly
5. Still Standing
6. Classic Example (feat. Pharoahe Monch)
7. Chris Farley
8. The Light You Burned (feat. Trials)
9. Parade Of The Dead
10. Last Confession
11. Hillatoppa
12. Fifty In Five
Mikolai, June 2009
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