Paris - The Devil Made Me Do It [The Deluxe Edition]

One listen to The Devil Made Me Do It makes one wonder if Paris recorded the album in a cloistered, cold bunker -- or at least the kind of abandoned warehouse he and his crew marched through during his videos. As with early Public Enemy (a primary inspiration) and the two X-clan records, the best moments of Paris' debut work on two levels. Plenty of these tracks have dark, sleek grooves beneath them, built on expert beat programming and vicious claws instead of hooks. In addition to this, there's Paris' scholarly, tightly wound rhymes, which are crammed with problack themes -- odds are Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and Bobby Seale's Seize the Time were committed to memory long before they were written. Read More