Kottonmouth Kings

The Green Album - Wildy’s World.com Review

Kottonmouth Kings - The Green Album
2008, Suburban Noize Records

Kottonmouth Kings are revolutionaries in Indie Music. Don’t like the major labels? Start your own! How about your own clothing company. Put out ten albums over a nine year period while producing/releasing albums for as many as 20 other acts. Tour constantly. Is there time enough in the day? The Kottonmouth Kings have made the time. Along the way they’ve continued to make groundbreaking music that fuses rock, hip-hop and classic soul vibes. Their latest, The Green Album, continues in this vein.

Blaze Of Glory lyrically celebrates action and change yet is mired in a depressive and meandering arrangement. The rap celebrates overcoming a difficult start to life and yet is stuck in Sad-Sack Terziak mode. Rock Like Us turns the page with a more upbeat bit of musical trash-talk. The musical wrapping here is more sonic dissonance than support, but works for the dance club set. Trippin’ has something to it that is memorable, capturing some of the energy that Kottonmouth Kings are capable of. Where I’m Goin’ has a bit of a ballad feel to it, sounding much more mainstream than much of the material on The Green Album.

Be sure to check out Stand, which desperately wants to be an Americana tune. The chord progressions and lyrics suggest a much different arrangement lives on in this song with significant commercial potential. Freeworld is another song that wants to cross over into the pop/rock realm. Brother J grabs the mic on Freeworld to good effect, but this is another case where another arrangement suggests itself as a distinct possibility. Other highlights include What U In 4, Rainfall, Grass Is Greener and Plant A Seed.

Kottonmouth Kings have songwriting talent that wants, at times, to break out of the hip-hop pond they play in. Several songs here are potential pop/rock hits with the right arrangement. Stand in particular wants to express itself in a different way and just might make a huge hit for the artist who hears that other arrangement and helps it escape. The Green Album is definitely not recommended for the under-18 set, as most parents would not appreciate the constant drug references, but all in all it’s a pretty decent album. I was pleasantly surprised.

Rating: 3 Stars (Out of 5)

The Green Album - ReadJunk.com Review

Kottonmouth Kings “The Green Album”
Record Label: Suburban Noize Records
Genre: Hip Hop
Band Link: http://www.kottonmouthkings.com
The tenth full-length from the Kottonmouth Kings covers the usual stoner-rap territory.

I have to give them credit for a 20-track album that is chock full of pleasingly catchy and weed-friendly tunes, if embarrassing in its 90s college party vibe. But if I were the living cliche of a Gen X stoner (and there are many of those still out there), I would certainly crank this up while making a bong out of an apple.

FYI - Percentage of proceeds go to a variety of good causes.
RATING & SUMMARY:
Bottom Line: Makes me want a Scooby snack.
Overall Rating:
Reviewer: Adam Coozer
Rating: 3/5

The Green Album - Skyline.net Review

Whoever said that you couldn’t be productive or successful while smoking an abundant amount of weed, probably hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting the Kottonmouth Kings. For you see they are 7 of the most THC’ed out guys, even more than Cypress Hill (I know it is hard to believe) and they have managed to stay around for more than 14 years and produce ten studio full-lengths to their credit. Of course this could be because they have loads of interesting characters in the band from the lead vocalists Brad “Daddy X”, Dustin “D-Loc,” and Johnny, to the mentally challenged nature of their “mascot” Pakelika, or it could be because the stickiest of the icky gives them special powers.

As with the rest of KmK’s albums, The Green Album continues the trend of many tracks, all of which are stoner hits being filled with references to weed and munchies. For those doubting the magic of a white rapper still, you obviously haven’t heard KmK before, they are like the Wu-Tang Clan if the clan was a hydroponics club. Of course the album is filled with cliché things such as, over abundant gun shots and lyrics that are built for club music (great lyrical skill, but they spend most of their time talking about girls/weed/booze/money/etc etc), but it all seems to fall by the wayside when you let the album spin.

“The Green Album” is simply filled with tons of catchy songs about everyone’s favorite plant, so it’s hard to get mad at it. Mellow rap-fests appear in songs like “Blaze Of Glory,” “Trippin’,” and “Freeworld,” as more complex country/rock beats come up in tracks such as “Pack Your Bowls,” and “Plant A Seed,” and club beats are also aplenty. This record has almost every style that you could want from several vocalists/drums/a turntable (and whatever a “hydro-mechanix” is). So while I believe that many people grew out of the phase bands of the past such as Twisted, Kottonmouth Kings have always been able to represent what they care about most in tales and lyrics that never get old.

Not to mention that Tech N9Ne makes an appearance on the effort and he is amazing. So don’t go on a hatin’ spree. KmK are pretty linear with their love for the cannabis, which causes the lyrics to rarely change. But “The Green Album” has given us over an hour and 17 minutes of music, some of which is pretty addictive and could have you grinding some girls butt in the club, some of which that has deep meanings, and some that are just chill rap jams that let you smoke your weed in peace. But these guys have survived a while for a reason, people love their green leafs and their rap, so a few problems can be over looked while we help plant a seed.

Score: 7.5 (out of 10)

The Green Album - FaygoLuvers.net Album Review

Artist Name: KottonMouth Kings
Album Title: The Green Album
Release Date: October 28th, 2008
Record Label: Suburban Noize Records

It’s their tenth full length studio album, their thirteenth year in the industry, and a new chapter to add to the Kottonmouth catalog. It’s been a long strange trip and each year seems to bring in more strange-ness to the scene. It would seem to me that the KMK had found their sound they were going for a long time ago on “Rollin’ Stoned” with how laid back and stony the album felt. Since then they’ve taken many different routes with their music and some have been good ventures while others have not.

Finally, this album and most of its sounds are like a breath of fresh air from the Sub Noize Camp to branch away from their radical sounds of punk fusion with everything they do. I think that this, the Green Album, is a chance that they’ve taken to handle their music like they used to, with the laid back, mellow feel as opposed to the rip-hop sound they’ve been putting down. To me their rip-hop just doesn’t do it, I think that they’re better songwriters than that. For as much as those RH songs can be politically charged I just feel that if they were to take their time and sit down in their studio and write a connected track with the times at hand it comes out way better.

On this album what I like about it so much is how they not only took it back to a time of yesteryear, but they also kept the featured artists to a minimum which could display the Kings’ abilities that much more on the microphone. And in my personal opinion I feel that the group has grown over the years like a bud plant that’s been carefully crafted and well kept. Even though I like this album so much for the lacking on the rip-hop tracks they still snuck a couple in there: “Super Hero” and “So Cal.” If not your taste like myself thank god for the skip button. But then there are the tracks that are like the lyrical buds that I crave and want to hear with tracks like: “Pack your bowl”, “ Freeworld”, and “Where I’m Going.”

It’s an addition to make to your Kottonmouth Collection for sure if you like the group. If not a fan then roll up a dutch and burn that bitch while the disc turns in your friends system.
Websites:

KottonMouthKings.com
Myspace.com/KottonMouthKings

Reviewer: Whipstick
Favorite Track(s): Pack Your bowl
Overall Rating: 7 / 10