REVIEWSBeans, ‘End It All’

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• SPIN Rating:7 of 10

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Release Date: February 15, 2011
Label: Anticon

Beans always poses as an abstractionist, freaking motormouth cadences with a self-professed "mind that's literary." But on his fifth soloalbum, the former Anti-Pop Consortium rapper is actually more of a traditionalist, with songs grounded in elaborate boasts (save the post-recession critique "Air Is Free," where he rues oil spills and government bailouts as the "new hard times"). Beans' avalanche of verbiage can obscure his nuances, but a cast of collaborators -- disco evangelist In Flagranti, electro-hop eccentric Tobacco, psychedelic beat guru Four Tet, even Interpol's Sam Fogarino -- burnish his rhyme schemes into high-tech funk.