By: Keir Bristol
Rating: 9.5/11

The party’s over. The police have stopped by the house, now strewn with empty PBR cans, more than once. But the night doesn’t stop there. Everyone knows that Thirsty Thursdays wouldn’t be complete without the drunken 2 A.M. freestyling session, complete with tin garbage cans serving as drums.  

Prozilla takes this a couple of steps further - in fact, he takes it from the back of a sketchy alley after a house party to a sober, D-I-Y mixing session.  His latest, The Recess Mixtape, seems like a modern twist on 90’s hip hop. Meaning, if his mixtape was produced about 15-20 years ago, his music could be grouped with the likes of A Tribe Called Quest and Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth in terms of style, lyrical content, and flow.

The Recess Mixtape boasts a track listing ranging from slow rap jams (“Closer to My Dreams”) to potential underground party bangers (“No Stoppin’”). It shouldn’t be too taken seriously - not in the sense that it isn’t a good mixtape of course, but in that it was meant to be a fun project, for people to listen to while they are having fun. And I don’t mean fun as Ke$ha waking up as a rich Black man and hitting on Mick Jagger look-a-likes. I mean easily attainable fun, as in lets have a beer, sit down with some friends, listen to some good music and have a conversation sprinkled with inside jokes.

Now, what sets Prozilla apart from the other rappers on the radio these days? He’s talented, he’s fun, and he raps about what he knows. Prozilla doesn’t rap about being rich, because he’s NOT (that’s not to say that he doesn’t rap about eventually becoming rich, but I’m sure that’s to pay for those college bills he’s racking up). He raps about women, but he doesn’t only rap about meaningless sex with them.  Instead, he takes a smooth beat (think urban art exhibit opening in New York City meets house band at a classy restaurant), and raps coherently about his daily life and thoughts. It’s relatable, and it’s real.

Take a trip back to your childhood; recess was the fun part of school. And that’s exactly what this mixtape is. FUN.