Hip-hop has to be applauded for being one of the few genres that regularly features duets where one of the participating members is deceased. On Blue Collar's superb Build Me Up, which steals wholesale the chorus of the Foundations' Build Me Up Buttercup, Rhymefest has managed to rope in the late Ol' Dirty Bastard to holler along while the Chicago rapper amusingly treats the former Wu-Tang Clan member as a foul-mouthed agony uncle.
Raising rappers from the dead isn't the only impressive trick that Rhymefest pulls on his debut album. From the slickly vitriolic Devil's Pie, which kicks off with a snippet of the Strokes' Someday before launching into a soulful Blair, Bush and Rumsfeld baiting rant, through to the twanging, southern-fried Down by Law and Kanye West-featuring Brand New (with whom he won a Grammy for co-writing West's song Jesus Walks), it's a striking collection of songs that effortlessly mixes humour with the smooth and the serious.
