Cassette Review: FRVR "From Me, To You" (Fine Rhymes Vinyl Records)

[$10 // https://finerhymesvinylrecords.bandcamp.com/album/from-me-to-you]

This is the first of three cassettes that were sent to me by the same person and it's kind of funny because the label is called Fine Rhymes Vinyl Records and I never really put together that it was abbreviated as FRVR until I started putting together the subject and link for the review.   I guess it's because I always just saw FRVR as being an abbreviation for "ferver" or "fever" or even "forever" but I didn't think of it being that way.     Additionally, it needs to be noted that when these three cassettes arrived they ended up in a stack with others and the cassettes themselves really have little defining marks on them, which you will see by the pictures.   So of the three sent to m by FRVR, this is the one that I like to call the one that says "play me" (It's very "Alice in Wonderland").

So FRVR is hip hop and there are beats and audio clips.   There is some soulful singing as well as horns, or at least the smoov jazz sound of a saxophone.    Within the loops I can hear anything from Us3 to Tribe Called Quest to Digable Planets to the RZA influenced soundtrack of "Kill Bill".    I also really like the idea of one of the audio clips in here talking about how jazz is a style and you can't define it.    That works with jazz for sure, but also it helps represent this cassette and this whole of beats genre on the whole as well:  it's just something you play and not define.

My biggest obstacle with this cassette comes in the form of all hip hop cassettes now really where I'm never sure if the audio clips are being sampled (as in taken from another source) or if they are actually being spoken by the artists behind them.   This also comes into play with the beats, though not as much because I assume most everyone creates their own beats but then maybe the horns or singing bits could be extracted from another source.  I don't know-- it all becomes so unclear to me as to what comes from where and how.

At the end of the day though, I really can't worry about such things.   It comes down in a lot of ways to kind of keeping score and saying "Well, this audio clip is from this movie but this one is original" and all of that and just, you know, who really cares?   The whole thing flows well and it moves from beat to beat flawlessly so whatever is being done is executed in a way that others need to take note of and possibly learn from.      This could be entirely original or pieces of the audio clips could be sampled.     Whichever is the case though, it doesn't take away from the greatness of this and that's all that really matters: this is a work of art you need flowing through your speakers.