The Herbaliser - Same As It Never was
From the age of 16 through to about 8pm last night, I wasted my youth (and early adulthood) wasting my time playing hour after hour of the Championship Manager and latterly, Football Manager series. Oh how much fun I used to have, taking charge of Manchester United, selling all their players just before the transfer window would shut and then watching them descend into relegation never to darken my computer screen with their vomit inducing players ever again.
Anyway, a few years ago, the new incarnation of the game came out with a nifty little press engine that would let you know just how brilliant/shit you were at managing your team/players. A personal favourite of mine: ‘Journalists are beginning to run out of superlatives to describe the current form of Kennedy Bakircioglu’. My point? Well, this particular album is good. Perhaps even better than Kennedy Bakircioglu in his pomp on the right of midfield.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this was better than the aforementioned Mr. Bakircioglu.
I love ‘The Herbaliser’. Their refreshing take on hip-hop infused so delightfully with funk, horns (real horns, Ronson) and various other genres which shouldn’t fit should be a benchmark for any artist looking to start out.
From ‘Same As It Never Was’ through to ‘Stranded on Earth’ you are provided with the same consistently brilliant delivery so much so that by the end you truly are beginning to run out of superlatives to describe just how fantastic the album is.
I have to say that I was slightly worried about what this album would deliver. A new record label, line up variations and such generally lead to something altogether different. Different isn’t always worse, but generally it is. Not in this case. The album is unmistakeably different. Funkier than previous offerings and perhaps less heavy on the hip hop side, yet it works oh so well.
It really would be unkind to this work of brilliance to pick out favourite tracks, especially in the absence of no discernable weak tracks to counter balance the favouritism, so I won’t. I was planning on leaving this article with a whole bunch of superlatives to describe my admiration for this piece of work, however, as you already know, I ran out two paragraphs ago.