Creative Differences

"Stop saying that fucking word!"

Of course, N.W.A. and Fellowship did come from the same cafe, and it's all love between them cats, but there is tension between the sounds; waves clamoring like wet metals against each other, each hoping for a good, clean, loss. Blackshirts in the streets beat their former brothers.

Creative Differences is a thrashing death, a beast-too-burdened splintering its sinew into chainlink; finally, something to call its own, finality, a gate to keep. A rib is a cage. It's a foreboding image of what will become of the rap crew; ghost of Christmas (odd)future. Every group nowadays is a platform from which solo careers launch — blame it on the splits — but Living Legends was a supergroup from its inception.

The West Coast had too wide a breadth of sounds and styles to satiate them all. Brash sibilance v. Yes-yes-y'all response-and-call. Jury's still out on that one, but I have a feeling we all lost.