This EP was released on January 19th in the year of our lord 2017. I’m personally not really familiar with Planet Asia. I honestly can’t remember how this project ended up on my schedule. I think I’ve heard some features from him here and there, so I must have been impressed. My backlog is catastrophic… Anyway, it’s only 8 tracks long, and the majority of them are under 3 minutes in length, so this should be a fairly smooth ride. Every song is produced by Sonny Vintage.

Intro
The Scientific Era
Investments
Silk Road Merchant
Get Money Interlude
Get Money
Made It featuring Hus Kingpin & Rozewood
Velour Portraits featuring Rozewood

The project starts off with a brief instrumental intro reminiscent of a start screen from a retro arcade game. The first actual song, The Scientific Era, has a dusty garage-band-ish vibe. I was generally pleased with the production work from Sonny Vintage. Planet Asia’s voice reminds me of Nappa from Dragon Ball Z for some reason.

I’m on my job, yo, writin’ novels
For the first time in your life you’re watchin’ lightnin’ in a bottle
Disc jockeys go back and forth with this with the toggle

The third track is another instrumental interlude. I’m not sure where the voice clips are from. They sound like they’re from a movie. It serves as a good intro to the song that follows, which has a really dope beat. Sonny Vintage put his ASS in “Silk Road Merchant.” Asia rapped his ass off too, but I kinda wish the song had a more fleshed out structure. It kinda feels like he was more focused on getting his bars out than crafting a complete song. The interlude before Get Money is a bit long winded. It gets the point across, but the instrumental gets old real quick. The song itself is hard as fuck. I love the laid back production, and Planet Asia was gettin’ busy; especially on the second verse. The hook is nothing special, but it gets the job done. I love the piano based production on Made It. It’s definitely my favorite instrumental on the project. I’m not familiar with either of the features, but they did a pretty good job. I think that was Hus Kingpin singing the hook. His voice is really smooth. It sounds great over the piano driven beat. Rozewood has a really great voice for the softer instrumentation as well. The title track has a really nice beat too. Planet Asia did his thing on the first verse, but Rozewood kinda stole the show in my opinion. That Shining reference was awesome.

This EP is actually pretty great. I wasn’t blown away by Planet Asia or Sonny Vintage at any point, but I think they work really well together. I don’t really have any major complaints. If anything my one gripe would be that most of the songs feel like they could use a bit more work. The final two tracks are the only ones that really felt like they were completely finished songs. However, other than that this was a solid release. Listeners with weak attention spans might be bored by the lowkey production style, but for people who like to stay focused when listening to music I don’t see much to dislike. It’s dope.

Favorite Song: Made It
Least Favorite Song: Silk Road Merchant

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