Late Night Blues

Stylistically, Big Bud's second full-length was in fine form. A loose, not unnecessarily noodly free flow of barely audible Latin drum'n'bass, percussion-heavy jazz, and Middle Eastern beats, with New York's Weldon Irvine (Mos Def, Nina Simone, Talib Kweli, and Hi-Tek) adding louche soul and interspersed small talk to the affair. But Late Night Blues, at least its first half, was infatuated with its own hyper-scholastic jam structure, stubbornly adding to the pseudo-intellectual pretenses of middle-age jungle. While disc two relied more on pure-flavored drum'n'bass, which worked in its favor, it couldn't save the whole thing from an irritatingly wearying academia.