I know that it’s been a while since I’ve done an album of the week and for that I apologize. It’s not that I haven’t been listening to any music, cause I’m constantly listening to something, it’s just that it’s been a while since I’ve heard something that really made me stop and say, “Holy shit this is amazing.” Well, that exact quote was said by me yesterday when I bought Camu Tao’s “King of Hearts.”

For those of you who don’t know, Camu Tao was a member of the famous New York underground group The Weathermen, which consists of El-P, Aesop Rock, Yak Ballz, Tame One, Cage, and Breeze Brewin. He was also one the Definitive Jux lineup before the label disbanded. And for those of you who don’t know, Camu passed away a little over two years ago after a long battle with cancer. “King of Hearts” was to be his solo debut on Def Jux and he was in the process of making the album during his battle with cancer.

After Camu’s death El-P took it upon himself to finish “King of Hearts” as best he could without taking any of what Camu wanted away from it. Because Camu died in the process of making his album a lot of the songs were only demos that he had made on his own, all of the beats he had made with garage band and vocal tracks were recorded on logic, but some of the tracks were already together on mp3’s but had not been mastered. Since Camu’s death El-P has worked on mastering the album and released the “finished” product yesterday.

I had been planning on getting the album for a while and when rave reviews of the album showed up in my twitter feed non-stop I bought it immediately off itunes. It was not even half way into the album that I stood there at the bus stop and said to myself, “Holy shit this is amazing.” I do have to say that the album takes a little getting into because of how rough the tracks can be since they are mainly demos but once you get past the rawness of it and really listen to Camu and what he was doing and where he was going to take his music it absolutely blew me away.

I can honestly say that this album is unlike any other hip hop album I’ve ever heard. Those of you who are looking for a traditional hip hop album, emcee rhyming over a simple beat, this is probably not for you. For those of you who are into “progressive” hip hop then this is definitely for you. Had Camu lived to completely finish his album and to have it realized entirely how he imagined it I can guarantee everyone would be talking about “King of Hearts” for years to come. “King of Hearts” takes underground hip hop in a direction I have yet to really hear it go and as my roommate put it earlier today “imagine what his next album would’ve been like.” That is something I think only Camu could have truly imagined but I can definitely say it would have been absolutely unreal.

So please do yourself a favor and go buy “King of Hearts” right now and help keep Camu Tao’s memory alive not just in your hearts but also through his music. You can get it from DefinitiveJux.com as well as iTunes. There are several different packages for the album, some of which include a donation to The Lung Association. I hope all of you who do purchase “King of Hearts” enjoy it as much as I am and be sure to let everyone you know listen to the album, I’m sure it’s different from anything they’ve heard. I’ve included one track from the album in this blog post but that is not how you should base your idea of what this album is at all, every track is different and offers a completely different vision of what Camu had in mind.