OK, I’d have to admit that when Babble first gave me a copy of his two-song pre-release last year, I wasn’t feeling it. I thought it was covered with a lot of nonsense wordplay that I had no interest in. So, naturally, I judged the new album with a biased opinion when I first heard it. Yeah I know, I might have been hating at first, but I finally realized what Babble was trying to do.

Out of the many MCs I know in Carbondale, Babble has to be one of the hardest-working ones I’ve met. This kid doesn’t rest. He went back to Evanston for the summer and came back to school with a studio-recorded album. Now, that’s quite impressive if you ask me. Believe it or not, Carbondale does have an underground hip-hop scene and it’s cats such as Babble that keep it strong by coming to the events and performing for your listening pleasure.

I remember when I Djed the first annual Illinois Skillz Battle my freshman year, Babble walked up sporting a Celtics jersey with dark rimmed glasses and a backwards hat and was like, “Yo, you got any Non-Phixion son?” The first impression I got from him was that he was just another hardcore hip-hop fan. Turns out he basically ate up every MC on stage like they were a full-course dinner and won the first title as the Ill Skillz champion. Ever since those aggressive days of battling, Babble has come along way.

On “Purple Line Track,” which he cleverly named because that is the L-train route that extends from Chicago to Evanston, Babble seems to have created a signature style for himself. He hits you with three syllables per rhyme with only fill-in words in between with a continuous flow that never seems to end. Babble’s flow is like a machine gun, one rhyme after another where your natural reaction is to rewind what he said to see if he’s actually making sense. Now that’s the impressive part:He really is saying something. I just think that sometimes he shouldn’t sacrifice content for wordplay.

Babble’s full of creative ideas, but he seems to nullify them

when he concentrates too much on his delivery. What can I say, though, is that that this is his first album and it can only mean improvement from here on. I’d have to rate this album a 7, and even though I thought the length of the album is more of an EP, it’s definitely worth $5. Come on, people, $5 won’t kill you. The best part is, if you come to Sunday School Sessions Open Mic Poetry at 600 University Ave., which is popping off every Sunday, you can catch Babble perform live and personally buy his CD off of him for a very discounted price. Who knows, maybe he’ll give you his autograph if you’re nice to him.

Tony is a junior in journalism, his views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian