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The Platform is one of those timeless long-players, like Run-DMC's Raising Hell or EPMD's Strictly Business, where you'll want to commit every track to memory.
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The most alluring aspect of The Platform is the array of finely-crafted beats-
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The most alluring aspect of The Platform is the array of finely-crafted beats assembled by Evidence and DJ Premier protégé The Alchemist, which are in turn juggled and sliced at will by the hands of DJ Babu, the oft-forgotten man in the hip-hop equation.
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On their major debut, The Platform, Dilated Peoples try to approach the line between commercial success and underground maintenance.... In the process, the group achieves mixed results.
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A balanced, lyrically inspiring collection of songs.
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Platform would benefit from greater lyrical diversity, and it suffers from moments of monotony and inertia, but it's a promising debut from a group that should only improve with time.
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MCs Evidence and Rakaa's shortcomings are amendable because they do have a great scratchmaster in DJ Babu. The problem is that this inventive DJ is allowed to shift gears and twist and crawl only after the rappers have said their pieces.
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The Platform, for all its individual strengths, never hits any kind of synergy as an album.
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Their debut album sits comfortably between the party-heart, old skool shape-throwing of Jurassic Five and the darker weedscapes of Cypress Hill.
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SelectDJ Babu's sample wizardry and scratching are impeccable, as are Rakaa and Evidence's agile rhymes, but their rigorous insistence on old-skool B-boy values leaves little room for risk-taking. [July 2000, p.106]
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Dilated Peoples are still painfully tame on the mike, especially Evidence, who hits a dubious milestone in "The Platform" by becoming the first rapper ever to utter the words "between you and I." The vocals sink the music: This is the kind of hip-hop album where the MC compares himself to Steve Howe, and while you hope he means the baseball player, you know in your heart he really means the guitarist from Yes.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 0 out of 3
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raycMay 20, 2005Rapping is nothing special,but the flow of rakaa and evidence fits perfectly with the magnificently crafted beats from evidence and the alchemist.