I'm going to come right out and admit that this is my introduction to ETO. I stumbled on his album The Beauty Of It this past summer and I was just totally swept up by it. I really felt compelled to write something about it but when I started doing my due diligence and looking into the guy I quickly became completely overwhelmed by his output. The man is like a newspaper from the '30s, the press is always running and the ink is usually still wet on the last edition by the time he's ready to ship the next. It's like he'll drop a mini-album in the morning, go have a smoke and a sandwich at the deli around the corner, and then come back and drop a mixtape by quarter to EBD. As I said, I felt a little lost in the bush trying to get a bead on him, so I shelved my review and moved to other things... that is until I threw on The Beauty Of It last week while I replied to emails and played with one of my cats, and... man, this thing is gritty, and dirty, and I am compelled to speel about it. Never let it be said that I leave stones unturned.
The Beauty Of It is ETO's fourth LP, and despite every track having been produced by a different soundmaster, the album feels, like a tight, cohesive whole. It's very much like a film in that way. With every track centered around a different feature, and every song molded by the masterful touch of a different maestro behind the soundboard, the entire album still manages to feel like it was the product of a singular, artistic vision. Which it really was. ETO has demonstrated that he is a formidable director of talent and a nuanced collaborator on this release, which, as far as I've read, are not things that people have said about him up to this point.
The album begins with the dark, reflective ripple of the title track produced by Motif Alumni. From what I can gather this opener is about how it doesn't matter how much you achieve or how far you've come, there is always someone who is looking to get their sodden little mitts on your crown, and therefore, that "beauty" ie. power, security, respect, are fleeting and need to perennially earned. It is a great way of introducing an album that's all about the fight for survival in the entrepreneurial underground of the big city's drug trade. "No," produced by Illien Rosewell, definitely helps put cement shoes on the metaphor of the title track, grounding it in bars about moving product and burning up the competition like a dime bag of hashish. Things get a little more desperate sounding on the despondent, sinking-pool of sound "Guilty Intruder," and the side-eye glancing, guarded vibe of the track is pretty representative of the wet and dirty, cold and cautious, jazz-spliced-loop backed, neo-noir rap of the rest of the album.
As much as I'm here for the darker elements of The Beauty Of It, I do appreciate the detours, such as the passionate overflow of the R'nB tinted "Nothin' Like You," which features a clean and silky chorus by the enticing Nyticka Hemingway, a love song that lets us in on what all of ETO's hard living and harder work is in the service of, a good life, and a good woman. Tracks like this one remind us, that despite the depictions of wanton violence depicted elsewhere, the narrator is, in fact, human, and his motives are the same as anyone trying to make it in this world. The difference between ETO and someone with a BA in finance or communications, is that in writing his own destiny, he's not willing to take in on faith that the pen is mightier than the sword. He prefers to use both as they suit him.
