I guess there ain’t no person on this planet that hasn’t ever heard of Nelly. When that guy came up and became a mega star, he did the thing people just have to do in hip hop: He introduced his crew, the St. Lunatics, to everyone and used his own name as a pusher in oder to give his homies the possibility to come up with their own shit. Ali, also a member of the St. Lunatics, did just that. “Heavy Starch” is out.

Mainly produced by Jason “Jay” Epperson, the album often lacks of the thing you expect when an album comes from the Nelly entourage: Heavy Starch is not always that dirty, that grimy, that nervous, that uptempo as other “typical” albums from there are, it may be a listener's mistake to expect that, but it's like that. Of course, those otherwise typical Dirty South (the qualities mentioned) things appear on the record too (anything else would have been treason on his homebase), but I expected more of that stuff, and that’s why I am personally positively surprised by the record. Let’s get it straight: Nelly’s never been my thing, no disrespect, I don’t like that type of sound, and so I expected Ali to be somehow similar, especially as far as the production was concerned, but I was wrong. With his deep and calm voice Ali reminds me in some way of Nature (which I love!), and his rhymes know what they’re about: “360” goes down deep on a melancholy sample, “Wiggle Wiggle” with Nelly, Murphy Lee and Kyjuan is one of those typical St. Lunatics tracks, “Drop Top” even comes with a drum set that we would have expecte d in an R’n’B track (naturally, a female is singing the hook…), “Serious” consists of a beat set like 08/15 but is really dope. The whole rest fits somewhere in between in the record which makes the album not a superdope thing but still not bad. I’d say it’s definitely worth checkin’ out, especially if you’re some kind of fan of the St. Lunatics artists. (Emm)