Nicolay & Kay "Time:Line" (Nicolay Music)
Kay is actually a dude; Nicolay is also a dude; and Time:Line is a hip-hop album -- not a house-DJ mix -- despite the femmed-up design of its cover. Those minor incongruities could've signified an exercise in ol' fashioned identity-bending, but they're all sort of accidental, perhaps. The songs are what matter here, and Nicolay (a Dutchman who has resettled in North Carolina) uses them to expand on the thinky/thumpy R&B flair of The Foreign Exchange's Connected, his project with Little Brother's Phonte Coleman. Those grooves had the kind of breathing room that comes with minimalism; Time:Line's sonics are just as intelligent, but they're often heavier on the gloss. Although Nicolay delivers some Exchange-style quiet storms ("The Lights" and "Tight Eyes," in particular) there are several stylistic breakouts, including an amped-up Mediterranean shuffle ("The Gunshot"), a deliberately badass woofer-mover ("Grand Theft Auto") and a fully realized funk blowout ("Blizzard"). As for Kay, he falls somewhere between Black Thought's no-nonsense presence and Common's measured self-awareness. Yeah, that's a fuzzy description of the Houston MC, and it's not intentionally disparaging. But here's the deal: Although Time:Line is a relatively cohesive birth-to-death concept album, I still haven't found a couplet or two to latch onto -- or hate, for that matter. And that middling reaction might say more about Nicolay's ability to manage a rapper than it does about Kay's writing itself.
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