Micro Reviews; everything you need to know in less than 500 words.
The Rising Tied, The Debut Album From Fort Minor.

Introduction
For those of you who don’t know, fort minor are a re a hop hop group started by Linkin Park’s rapper Mike Shinoda. Fort Minor contains Mike himself of course, and a number of other artists including styles of beyond and Jermain ‘beatdown’ McQueen. Released in 2005, this is their first album, and it was produced by Jay-Z. Fans of rap and hip hop are probably going to be very interested by now, whereas the rest of you will either have gone off to look at other things, or be wondering what I’m going on about. Let me spell it out for you: We’ve got some very talented artists here, and a producer who knows his shit, and is a damn fine rapper himself.

The Tracks
First, for any people who hate hip hop and rap who might still be reading, let me say this: Not all rap and hip hop is composed of black gangsta’s rapping out drugs misogyny and how much money they make.. This album is living proof of that.

When they are good, they are fantastic. But when they are bad they are awful. Fortunately, most are pretty awesome. The opening track “Remember the name” uses the typical self promotion of Rap, but adds a new kind of sound on it, and also focuses more on the fact that there’s hard work and great people behind this music, it doesn’t just HAPPEN, (as opposed to, look at me I’m so awesome, I have bitches and hos and I don’t even try):
“No one even knows how or why, he works so hard it seems like he’s never got time, because he writes every note, and he writes every line, and I’ve seen him at work when that light goes on in his mind…”

Whereas some tracks are pretty generic for the hip hop genre, others are very different both in sound and lyrical content (Lyrics being VERY important to rap). Songs such as ‘Right now’ and ‘Red to black’ explore the problems of ordinary people and provide interesting views, whereas ‘Kenji’ tells the stories of Mike’s Japanese parents in World war two America.

In closing
500 words isn’t enough for me to tell you all about The rising tied as the album is so varied. Suffice to say, almost every song is either pleasant to listen to or has a strong theme/story that it explores, be it ‘Cigarettes’ a song that looks at Rap music’s reputation and compares it to cigarettes, or ‘Where’d you go?’, a laid back song looking at the pressures of modern life for EVERYONE.

For reading this far, Here is your reward, slip. The last song on the album, and a VERY powerful piece of music I rank amongst my all time favourites.

Final rating:
8/10. But this album. You’ll love it. The one or two naff tracks are more than made up for by the great ones.

Links:
http://fortminor.com/

-Evis T.
http://www.xomba.com/user/evis_t

Want to buy this for as cheap as possible? : http://evisemporium.zlio.net/p/Fort-Minor-Rising-Tied-The-Parental-Advisory-Digipak-PA/11635756