Music Review: Verbal Kent – Deer Guts EP

Verbal Kent is a mainstay in the Chicago underground hip hop scene. From formulating a freestyle group to even coming close to death (neck slashing) in 2003, Verbal Kent has his fair share of stories. Remaining a productive emcee in Chicago is no easy feat. Yet, he has been putting out music for the past decade. Now, he has linked up with MelloMusicGroup. His first release, Deer Guts, is a sampling platter of what the man known as Dan Weiss has to offer.

This short composition of music never finds a chance to become verbally boring. “Joe Shmoses” allows Verbal Kent to be the “one man Rambo” while he watch peeps “do the Lambeau Leap” with a regular and double time rhyme pattern. Meanwhile, the scratched in chorus of “Run The Gamut” lets him, Lance Ambu, and Alltruisms get loose over the track. “Deer Guts” and “Blink Then It’s Over”  lets Verbal Kent get loose with more rhymes and declarations of his dopeness. Thus, you get nothing but practical battle rhymes and presentations from Verbal Kent on this EP.

Production wise, Verbal Kent is batting 1.000 with the production he selected. “Blink Then Its Over” has Illmind! providing some bleeps, boom bap, and hard bass lines for Verbal to do his thing over. “Deer Guts” is another head banger provided by Apollo Brown, while the Khrysis produced “Joe Shmoses”, you get even more of that boom bap that was previously mentioned.   With “Run The Gamut”, the best production on the entire EP shines through the speakers with a soul vocal sample and matching bass lines and scratched chorus. If anything, the production works great with the lyrics.

If anything, this EP serves as a feature presentation demonstrating that Verbal Kent can rhyme. He doesn’t get into any true concepts. He is basically showing that he can rhyme. Thus, whether someone will enjoy this depends on if they want to hear a man spit self-consuming declarations of one’s greatness. Regardless, Deer Guts is another solid addition to Verbal Kent’s catalog.