Steve 'Flash' JuonIt’s not hard to understand the basic joke of “Flip Phone Chronicles” when you look at the cover. Yes – we all know not to judge a book by the cover – bear with me though. If you’re gen alpha you’ve probably never had a flip phone or taken a photo with one. For those of us slightly older who can remember a time before phones were “smart” the earliest ones to have cameras looked like the cover of this album, and if they could take pictures they were as grainy as the one you see here. It was a built in limitation of the technology. Not only were they not capable of high DPI (dots per inch – what makes old school digital photos look grainy) they wouldn’t have the memory capacity to store the photos even if they could. This was as good as it would get before iPhones came along.
If this seems like a surface level understanding of what producer Noah Rime$ is doing, take comfort in the fact songs like “High” are at the same level. The jokes here is that the word “hi” as in “hello” becomes the word “high” as in “stoned.” I’m not chiding him for that. In fact I actually appreciate that it’s simple and to the point, like the track he produced. He plays with a short loop, chops up the samples, and keeps it all on tempo. Then he shows a little more creativity on a song like “Lou Williams” which (here’s the compliment he’s been waiting for) is Alchemist-like in its structure. The drums are crispy, the sped-up sample hits strong, and I dig the R&B crooner touches weaved in. The only bad thing here is that it’s 49 seconds long.
If I have one major gripe with “Flip Phone Chronicles” it’s that Noah has a lot of good ideas that it feels like he barely explored. Maybe he’s just shopping these beats around to potential emcees? No. That can’t be it. He’s asking for a minimum of $7 for this product on Bandcamp. That’s going to be a tough sell for only 16 minutes of music, especially when it’s spread over 13 tracks. Even so there are emcees who are going to like what he’s got to offer, evidenced by the fact exactly one named Preta Sessa shows up for “Blue Streak.” If you weren’t already convinced he was on some Alchemist shit just picture Roc Marciano or Havoc rapping to it instead.
To make a long story short here I think Noah Rime$ is solid. He’s not breaking the mold but he’s also not filling it up with shit and selling you something that stinks. Far better to be an Alchemist clone than to jump up and down on a keyboard while mixing it with a Windows 98 laptop. I’ll take a solid instrumental project like “Flip Phone Chronicles” over a lot of the BS that I review, but I still think $7 is a hard ask given the short length of the tracks and only one featured emcee being here. He’s aight though. I’ll take a second dose of getting “High” with him any time.