REVIEW: Serge Severe & Terminill’s “Service Without A Smile” (EP)
Serge Severe has been recording great music for awhile, and whenever I see that he is about to release new music, I push all other recordings aside and listen to it. Service Without A Smile is a brand new 8-song EP from him, and when someone reaches this level in his discography, it’s great to hear accomplishment, history, and hopefully their next destination, or at least knowing that within an artist’s core center, they are ready to move forward.
As he says in “Words In Motion”, “I got too much hometown pride, homie, F.U.” and the reason for that? In the lines before that, Serge talks about how some people might tell him to not say where he’s from, but Portland, Oregon has been his headquarters, and there’s nothing wrong with saying this, regardless of mainstream and hipster trends. Also, regardless of where he’s from, Serge is a storyteller who not only knows how to write stories, but understands how to perform them. With all of the samples surrounding the title track, complete with layers of guitar and a brutal horn section, I’d love to hear him be able to perform this with musicians who would be able to take the meaning of this song to a bigger level. In a way, the chorus with the line “I heard these nice guys are goin’ out of style/that’s why I’m giving you service without a smile” is a mirror to what hip-hop has become, but Serge feels that no matter how much people things change, you still have to be determined to do things for yourself. If it means he can do this with pride and a smile on his face, then service will be honored by those who understand its importance. Then you have Terminill, a damn good producer who not only constructs damn good beats and songs, but also knows and understands the emphasis of sample and sound placement within Serge’s lyrics.
I don’t care: release three more EP’s, release two more albums, go for a string of singles, collab with whomever. Serge Severe is one of my favorite MC’s from the Pacific Northwest and with or without a smile, I hope he will continue doing what he does in order for people to move towards his way.
(Service Without A Smile is available as a legitimate free download (54.5mb). If you like this, feel free to buy some of Serge Severe’s other albums shown below.)
VIDEO: Serge Severe & Terminill featuring Jon Belz’s “Rare Flow” | This Is Book's Music posted: 23 May at 2:09 pm
[...] produced this. The song is from the Serge/Teriminill EP, Service Without A Smile (which I reviewed here) so if you haven’t heard any hip-hop from Portland, Oregon yet, feel free to start here. [...]