VARIOUS ARTISTS - DEFINITIVE JUX PRESENTS: III

How often do you get excited about a piece of music? Seriously. How often do you anticipate an album’s release, to a point of feeling genuinely worked up and excited? And when you get that record, do you listen to it over and over and over again? Are you fucking blown away the first time you hear it?
If you’re me, it doesn’t happen too often. But in the last few years, when it has happened, the majority of those records have been Definitive Jux releases.
I could try and analyze all the specific reasons why their records are so goddamn great, but I think they sum it up best with the motto they slapped on their website: "Quality, 'cause motherfuckers are bored."
Definitive Jux Presents: III is a compilation teasing you with what’s to come from one of the most consistently original record labels since Blue Note. It’s 16 tracks from more than 13 of the most unique and creative MCs, DJs, and producers in hip-hop. And it’s what I’ve had on repeat for the last two hours.
The trademark “No Bullshit” ethos is in full force on cuts like Murs’ fierce “You’re Dead to Me”, Aesop Rock’s mellow but matter-of-fact “All in All”, and the Perceptionists’ (Mr. Lif, Akrobatik, DJ Fakts One) funky-as-hell “Medical Assistance”. El-P and Cage work the art of storytelling in the musical movie “Oxycontin Part 2”. And Rjd2 represents with his incomparable production alchemy on the simultaneously funky and atmospheric “Clean Living”, one of my favorite tracks on the record.
If you’ve never heard a Definitive Jux artist, Definitive Jux Presents: III is the perfect primer for these modern day Picassos. If you’re already down with the cause, this’ll satiate your hunger until the full-lengths start dropping.