Crimeapple, Preservation - El León (2024)

El León is the first installment in a planned trilogy of collaborations between New Jersey MC CRIMEAPPLE and New York producer Preservation. “If I’m too quiet for your taste then I don’t care/ You must not be familiar with Voltaire,” the MC shrugs on the album’s title track, over the sort of bluesy piano loop that recalls the casual swagger of Kool G Rap’s “Ill Street Blues.” Across El León, CRIMEAPPLE’s contraband-rooted fables are spiked with moments of rumination, like on “Camino Solitario,” where the MC peers into the mirror to try and make sense of the demons that have consumed him. The plaintive guitar that carries “Bulevar” inspires CRIMEAPPLE to journey back to his hardscrabble days growing up in squalor. And adding a sense of East Coast heritage to the LP, Brand Nubian MC Sadat X brings his gravitas to the rousing, brass-heavy “Don’t Mention It.”

Tracklist:
1.01 - Crimeapple, Preservation - El León (2:44)
1.02 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Don't Mention It (2:15)
1.03 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Lion VS Panther (1:23)
1.04 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Hunting Methods (1:39)
1.05 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Melena Dorada (2:40)
1.06 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Fumemos (2:51)
1.07 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Camino Solitario (1:47)
1.08 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Vida Mantequilla (2:10)
1.09 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Paw Prints In The Sand (2:48)
1.10 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Quanto Te Quiero (2:51)
1.11 - Crimeapple, Preservation - Bulevar (3:32)