Pioneering the soon to be lauded genre of tetris-hop, Subtitle stacks rhymes like shopping carts in the dim-lit parking lot of eternity. As Foxy Digitalis? resident whack M.C., I can only hope that editorial decisions will favor the development of N.B.S.H.I. (No Bling Safe Harbor Initiative). Despite the crummy acronym, the N.B.S.H.I. would embrace the few asymmetrical homies tipping more than 40?s, giving them a forum and hot meal. This sustenance and positive reinforcement would service as fuel for the continued battle against the Industry Clear Channel Man-Servants. It is in this post-tupacian present tense that we must champion the terabyte and squelch the bling.

So Subtitle steps up to the line, ready to charge the glass doors, swinging robotic bird arms and dropping square pegs into round holes. On first listen you feel a lack of flow, but then you realize the flow runs deeper, artesian, submerged beneath the surface logic of the adversaries Ghost Bass and Loop Kid. Subtitle is wrestling the beat, a beat wrangler leaving his teeth impressions for forensics. His ornithodonics break the skin of blubbery cheeks of uber-coolcool lay-it-down-smooth illusionists. If the L.A. underground is the birth place of David Copperfield rap linguistics, Subtitle is the Houdini translation, working himself out of arrhythmic chains and syntax submersion tanks.

The beats still lumber, bowed under the weight of Subtitle, who straddles them like a singleted high school regional wrestling champ. They lumber as beautiful defeats, moving sluggish and stumbling for a towel and water bottle. Despite the guest list of producers, the thing holds together, offering a muddy scrumpping tick-thud. No boom-bap was welcome. It is perhaps this combo of La Brea cannon ball high dive production and Subtitles drop-it-like-its-a-hot-crustacean flow demolition that finds GSL a bed and breakfast for the blacklisted outcasts of de-la-sold hip-hop. 8/10 -- Michael Kaufmann (15 August, 2005)