Alrightie, so this has been done more than a thousand times ever since DJ Shadow introduced "Endtroducing..." to the world, right? Right. So what? These opulent tracks feel so good and tight it would be a crime to dismiss them merely as trivial beats. Fat Jon's quality delivery is no surprise to those familiar with Five Deez, a Cincinnati-based crew that tosses beats in an old-school way, and the encyclopaedic dub declinations of Pole.
If anything, "Lightweight Heavy" is an appropriate title for an album that is protein-rich without containing all the nutrients an instrumental hip-hop devotee needs for their daily diet. This record is like a feather waiting for anyone to press the play button to start levitating in the smoke-saturated air for the next 45 minutes.
"Body Language" is a nice appetizer for the album: it's charming and mellow. The male voice all over it is like a piercing needle that sedates your ear and makes your brain feel like a numb, senseless sponge. At the end of the album you'll find a couple of quite different tracks; "Space Man" and "Point A 2 B" which almost sound like they don’t belong here. By adding these alien numbers to the whole deal, Fat Jon shatters a recurring theme. It's a shame he didn't explore this kind of diversity earlier in the record.
Nevertheless, once you enter Prefuse 73 baker's shop to buy a small loaf of bread and end up with a tasty birthday cake, you don’t care for muffins anymore. Fat Jon has clearly been shopping at Harrods for nice, juicy beats, but he lacks the haunting, miasmic feel of his peers. He lacks the overdubbed, austere, tortured laments of MF Doom and Nobody.
Maybe it's because of its background-sound qualities that I find "Lightweight Heavy" so...light! It doesn’t shake you by the shoulders. It doesn't defy your senses. But it will definitely make a joyful companion and a feel-good record for late summer nights.
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