Detroit has a long lineage when it comes to creating quality music whether you want to factor in Hip-Hop or not. But if you do throw Hip-Hop into the mix, then make sure Producer/MC Curtis “Black Milk” Cross is at the top of your clipboard. The baby-faced production prodigy has done his part to keep the spirit of J Dilla alive by crafting some of the hardest beats around, that would leave toughest underground Hip-Hop fan in a neck brace.

His productions credits are a who’s who of authentic MC’s as well as his collaboration efforts. He’s kept his fan base well fed with his albums, Sound Of The City Vol. 1, the Broken Wax EP, and Popular Demand. Not to mention joint ventures like Caltroit with Bishop Lamont, The Set Up with Fat Ray, The Preface with Slum Village’s Elzhi where (where he contributed to 14 out of 16 tracks), the much anticipated Random Axe project with Sean Price and Guilty Simpson—and now he plans on adding his fourth solo album, Tronic to a young but already impressive catalog.
 
Of course, all 14 songs are produced by Black Milk starting off with ‘Long Story Short’ featuring Detroit soul man Dwele. If your eardr ums get pass the perfect arrangement of drums, organs, and horns, then you’ll be able to listen to Black Milk’s brief bio, “Doing beats, see he’s gettin’ better brah/listenin’ to Pete Rock, Preemo, Dilla on the regular/I’m telling, ya/couldn’t tell me nothing to my ears/determined/learnin’ how to get my sound as good as theirs.”

From there, he fully pays respect to a producer’s best friend; the drums on ‘Give The Drummer Sum.’ Over the predominately drum-orient track, Milk shows that he’s been working on his word game just as much as he’s been perfecting his sound waves. Royce Da 5’9” pays a visit on the guitar-laden ‘Losing Out,’ and he brings his metaphor A-Game with him, “Puttin’ money on heads, like I’m payin’ their barbers.”
 
‘The Matrix’ is the equivalent of a real Hip-Hop show you’d probably catch in some small smoke-infested venue with artists like Sean Price and Pharoahe Monch taking part, while DJ Premier rounds out the back on the 1’s and 2’s. Over the futuristic rhythms and snares Black Milk starts off the festivities, “For every pair of lines I spit/it’ll leave you paralyzed, and bent/so clear a path/if ya not parallel to my paragraphs” followed by Pharoahe Monch’s, “Four-fingered ring rap/sling-slang, Pharoahe the flow’s good/you couldn’t hang if you were Ving Rhames in Rosewood” as Sean Price continues with, “Clark Kent with the glasses off/probably f*ckin’ Lois Lane cause her ass is soft/Kryptonite, but I’m a Blood today/Latin King tomorrow, keep it caliente” all while DJ Premier shows off the voice-sampled scratch-in hooks that he made so famous.

For those wanting to test their lyrical ability against Black Milk’s production, their chance comes on ‘Tronic Summer.’ The instrumental track goes on for over two minutes and has Black Milk’s voice faintly in the background, whereas the beat itself might give some listeners a J Dilla feel.
 
The rest of the album contains automatic repeat songs like, ‘Bounce 4 Life’ featuring Melanie Rutherford, the relationship antics of ‘Without U’ featuring Colin Munroe, the head banging ‘Hell Yeah,’ ‘Overdose,’ and the hypnotizing melodies of ‘Reppin For You’ featuring AB. Black Milk’s Tronic album is not a project to be shunned into the realms of the underground, because even those who avoid backpackers as if they were stricken with leprosy would find this album very rewarding. It’s filled with all the elements Hip-Hop was based off before it got branched into all different kinds of categories. Dope beats and dope rhymes equals an exceptional album; you don’t have to be a genius to figure that out—and judging by this CD alone, it’s easy to see that Black Milk is sitting way ahead of the class.