Funcrusher Plus
| Funcrusher Plus | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Company Flow | ||||
| Released | July 22, 1997 | |||
| Recorded | 1995–1997 (Corners: 1994) Ozone Studios, NYC No Mystery Studios, NYC |
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| Genre | Experimental hip hop, underground hip hop, political hip hop | |||
| Length | 73:52 | |||
| Label |
Rawkus Records RWK 1134 (first pressing) Rawkus/Priority/EMI Records 0499 2 50063 2 2 P2-50063 (second pressing) Rawkus/MCA/Universal Records 112 898 (third pressing) Definitive Jux DJX177 (fourth pressing) |
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| Producer | El-P, Mr. Len, Bigg Jus | |||
| Company Flow chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Funcrusher Plus | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |  |
| City Pages | (favorable) |
| CMJ New Music Monthly | (favorable) |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| Pitchfork Media | (9.0/10) |
| PopMatters |   |
| The New Rolling Stone Album Guide |   |
| Spin | |
| Stereogum | (favorable) |
Funcrusher Plus is the first studio album by American hip hop group Company Flow. It was released on Rawkus Records in 1997. In 2009, it was re-released on Definitive Jux. The album has been recognized as "a landmark independent hip-hop release".
AllMusic gave the album a perfect 5 star rating, and writer Steve Huey stated: "[Funcrusher Plus] demands intense concentration, but also rewards it, and its advancement of hip-hop as an art form is still being felt. It's difficult, challenging music, to be sure, and it's equally far ahead of its time." Jon Dolan of City Pages noted "[Company Flow's] evincing a confrontational critique of 'those signed, big-budget muthafuckas' like none hip hop has attempted since EPMD's Strictly Business."
Andrew Hultkrans of Spin gave the album 8 stars out of 10, commenting that "[the album] deconstructed hip-hop conventions and rebuilt them into a spare, murky, sputtering soundscape." Jeff Weiss of Los Angeles Times felt that "El-P conjured an apocalyptic minimalism -- the sublimated sound of clanging and cluttered train cars, city grime buried beneath cuticles, and the ghostly smoke of burning blunts."
Nate Patrin of Pitchfork Media said: "With the exception of the nocturnal crystalline funk of the Bigg Jus-produced 'Lune TNS' and the frequent scratch contributions from secret weapon DJ Mr. Len, Funcrusher Plus' beats bear the mark of El-P's dusty-but-digital aesthetic, which even back then had the same sort of beautiful-dystopia Blade Runner feel that informed Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein and his own Fantastic Damage a few years later."
Brian Coleman of CMJ New Music Monthly called it "the most important release of 1997 thus far." Joseph Schafer of Stereogum said, "Funcrusher Plus made for a hell of an opening salvo, and most emcee/producers would envy having such a record in their discography, but El mostly improved upon his work here later."
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