XS. One The Regiment: The Orientation (The .XS Collective)

By Emma Lee  •  28 Oct 2010 in Music

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Never having heard the prior albums of this Singaporean hip hop collective before, The Orientation is very unexpected from what you’d expect Singaporean hip hop to sound like; smooth rhymes, radical hip hop beats, sweet symphonies and dope melodies.

Featuring Singaporean hip hop/rap natives Azrael, DJ Ruxta, DoggFace, Ilohshix, K-i-n-G, Kill Bill, Mean and a host of other artistes, The Orientation flows from first to last track as gracefully as hip hop allows. Nothing too heavy, it’s content not waxing lyrical about pimps and hoes, or blingin’ rings and diamond necklaces,  rather the lyrical content of these tunes comes across as more intelligent than your average American produced rap songs of late. ‘Melayu Layu’ by K-i-n-G is, I believe, a Malay cover of ‘It was Written’ by Damian Marley, and it compares solidly to it’s English counterpart.

It’s evident that this Singaporean collective are a talented bunch, and it’s rare to hear an album produced by various artists glide from song to song with such ease. Even on the individual tracks, the artists obviously work well together, bouncing words off each other, with combined choruses and a lot of orchestral instruments used to give the music more texture. Being the 4th album of the .XS Collective, The Orientation shows how the group is going from strength to strength and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for these guys next…