MED has always been one of those emcees whose best asset is
the people in his circle. His 2005 debut album Push Comes to Shove was mostly produced by Madlib, with J Dilla, Oh
No, and Just Blaze handling the rest of the beats. Those beats were the most
memorable part of that album. MED was fine as a rapper then, but he wasn’t yet
great at constructing albums, and his best verses tended to appear on songs by
other artists (Madvillain’s “Raid” being the main example). As early as the
late nineties Lootpack days, MED seemed like he would go down as a weed
carrier, rapping on his friends' tracks just because he was around the studio during
recording sessions.
He took a long six years to release his second album, the
hubristically named Classic, but that
time did him well. His roster of collaborators, including Georgia Anne Muldrow,
Oh No, the Alchemist, Karriem Riggins, Talib Kweli, Aloe Blacc, and of course
Madlib, remains amazing, but as Push
Comes to Shove made clear, great beats and good features does not a good
album make. But those six years between albums were not wasted. MED came back a
better emcee than he’s ever been, riding the beat like a pro on “Flying High”
and adjusting his delivery to compliment the beat on every track, and he was
able to step back and craft a satisfying start-to-finish album experience the
second time around.
