THURSDAY, AUGUST 23:

Something tends to stick out about Awol One. You can decide not to like it at first, but you will like it later. Sometimes his eclecticism is hard to pinpoint and isolate—not necessarily because everything is so fast, but because it’s so slow of the time. And it’s because he is so vocals-centric, and for having an unorthodox roughness in his voice,—even for hip hop—it works. When it slows down, his voice is more distinctive and his lyrics change seasons dramatically. When the music speeds up, his lyrics spread out like an umbrella, but his voice find 100 percent focus. Although it looks like I’ve just applied a formulaic view to this, I hope this wasn’t the whole impression. I guess what I was trying to say was that the most affecting idiosyncrasy of Awol is that there are completely separate times for beefed-up sound and for the conversely drip-like-maple syrup sound. Awol has a knack for communicating subconsciously, and what happens then is that he creates an ambience satisfying in its astringency. It is not catchy like most music goes about being catchy—instead, he sticks like he has his own glue. (LA)