Yes, that is a terrible nickname for anyone to have. Yes it is THAT “Cobra Island”. Yes it is worth reviewing.
Honestly, I should not enjoy listening to this album. I don’t mean any disrespect to Sean Jordan aka the “Wordburglar” by saying that. What I mean is that ANY album, of ANY style of music, that is based around, an constrained strictly to something as specific as an 80s cartoon, shouldn’t be this good.
When I first saw that this album existed, I downloaded it with caution. While I am a fan of music that could be considered “Nerd-core”, just like with all art, it’s subjective whether it’s good or not. I had never heard of the album nor the artist at the time, so I was going in blind.
Let me start off by saying that if you are not a big fan of GI Joe from back in the day, there is no need to listen to this album, unless you have an insane love of EVERYTHING hip hop. The references come fast and repeatedly. This is, however, one of the things that may be coloring my enjoyment of it. I have always been a huge fan of GI Joe the original animated series. I own all the DVDs and even still have some of my old action figures. So hearing references to characters that I grew up watching on TV was hitting that nostalgia nerve pretty hard. It’s also apparent that Wordburglar either knows his shit when it comes to the show, or he did a ridiculous amount of research to prepare for this album. Mixed in with the usual rap slang, and lyrics is a deep explanation of certain characters from the show. Characters like Destro, Zartan, and Snake Eyes are given entire songs (or more) to explain who they are, and how they got that way.
This is a hop hop album despite the subject matter. There are a lot of cuts from other hip hop artist including; Wu-Tang, Notorious BIG, and even Digital Underground. All mixed together with beats either containing snippets from the show, or made entirely out of loops from the original music. I have been listening to this album almost non-stop for several days. I am not sure if it will all be as apparent to people that aren’t as big a fans as I am, but if you watched the animated GI Joe Movie the song “I Don’t Want To Go TO Cobra-La” will probably make you laugh.
Since hearing this album, I have gone back and found older albums from Wordburglar, and his skill is evident in those as well. Sure some of it comes off as corny, but that’s just part of being a hip hop artist and dealing with the subject matter he does. Again, it’s a free album, or you can throw some money his way. If you remember the show as fondly as I do, this will probably resonate with you, as well. I now have to hook up my VCR and watch my original copy of the animated movie. Maybe I can get my son hooked on this as well. Thanks Wordburglar for kicking this nostalgia trip off, because I sure am enjoying it, as well as the album.
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