Diversionary Tactics: Zzzzzzzz........

That's probably the graphic that you two expected at the beginning of the month.

Anyway, I learned something over the past sixty-one days: two months is waaaaay too long to stunt blog. When all of the music starts sounding the same, and you don't look forward to throwing another CD into the stereo, you have a problem, especially if you write a hip hop-themed blog that is all about listening to stuff and then writing about it.

I'm not quitting or anything, but it's time for a rest. So that's exactly what I'm going to do, and hopefully during my vacay, I will be able to gather some different albums that may inspire me much more than, say, fucking Rapper Noyd.

And now, a question from the audience:

Why the hell didn't you write about either Q-Tip or Ghostface Killah's new albums?

The answer is simple: major labels don't send me advance copies (yet), so any Gut Reaction pieces that appear are representative of my actual purchase of the album (unless I specifically mention otherwise). Unfortunately, to my chagrin, other shit kept getting in the way in September, so while I was able to swing Raekwon and Hova, everything else was put on the backburner. (Considering how good the Raekwon joint was, I feel I made the right choice.) I was considering reviewing the older version of Kamaal The Abstract that leaked to the Interweb almost a decade ago, but I figured that would be doing a disservice to Q-Tip, who finally convinced a label to release his jazz project. As for Ghostface, I can't say that I'm one hundred percent thrilled to listen to what is supposed to be his 'R&B' album, but as a Wu stan, it's a given that I will get to it soon.

Thanks for sticking around for the past two months. Drop me a line if you enjoyed the stunt and want to see something similar happen in the future (nothing before 2010, though: this shit took a lot out of me), or if you have any other suggestions for albums or artists that I should cover.

In the meantime, here's a link to the September posts, in case you missed any. And for completion's sake, here's the link to the August posts, as well. Tell your friends, and be sure to leave some comments.

I'll be back in a bit.

Love,

Max

PS. If you have a submission for the next Reader Review series, you can still send them to the e-mail address in the top right. Truth be told, when I pick this back up, I'll probably be running those with more regularity until I get back up to speed, so...