I Am Legion - Noisia, Foreign Beggars

"I Am Legion" is the side project of revered bass music trio Noisia, teaming up with MCs Orifice Vulgatron (now known as PAV4N) and Metropolis from grime group Foreign Beggars to put out this collab record. And for all the name power on it, this project sure does deliver.

Both legendary in their own spheres, Noisia and Foreign Beggars place a particular emphasis on the latter's grime; "I Am Legion" is effectively a rap album with strong electronic elements. And the two MCs from Foreign Beggars (whom I will refer to as Foreign Beggars, for the sake of simplicity) take full advantage of that, ripping off some nasty verses with clean grime flow and well-written lyricism. This is a time in which the grime scene and its dubstep counterpart were interacting wonderfully, as dubstep began to skyrocket up the charts in its newfound brostep style, and — even if "I Am Legion" explores a vast range of electronic styles, not just dubstep — it really shows. Foreign Beggars' pristine flow weaves itself through Noisia's acclaimed electronic production, ranging from brostep to halftime, and the result is very clean. Practically every performance both MCs set in motion is engaging and driven, no matter the topic, often taking the helm of each track and ensuring their success, whether that be through strong vocal hooks, sophisticated songwriting, consistent energy and sometimes just pure, simple aggression. Though the songs don't lyrically flow well to each other, it doesn't matter, because "I Am Legion" thrives on quality rather than cohesiveness. And I have to commend Noisia for holding up their side of the bargain, too, with some incredibly tasteful production; with electronic rap you have to expect the beatwork to be on point even if it sacrifices quality on the rap, and honestly Noisia do it as if they've done it a thousand times before. That penchant for sound design they've always had, that penchant for clean mixdowns, always reinforcing Foreign Beggars but unafraid to run off into their own production-focalized world — either in internal track movements in different tracks, or as a self-contained track in itself. In fact, as strong as Foreign Beggars are on this album, Noisia are almost stronger. But the problem comes here, not in quality, but in structure. Many of the tracks are very short, and these tend to be Noisia's production-driven ones, and the length of these tracks often suffocates the — rather interesting — ideas presented in them. It's a shame, really, because I'd have loved to see Noisia's half of this project be expanded upon more, but the track lengths bring them down.

This lowers the cohesiveness rating, to be sure, but also has a deceptively large impact on the average track rating. Don't let that fool you, though, because when you pair the accomplished outfits of Foreign Beggars and Noisia, you're bound to get a quality tracklist, and "I Am Legion" is still a quality project by any stretch of the imagination. Though quite old-school, most of these tracks have aged very well (perhaps with the exception of "Choosing for You"), and I'd recommend this to anyone who even moderately enjoys grime.