Ok, let me get this out of the way right at the start. I don't know much about hip hop. I don't have a history with it, I was raised by a family that was still stuck in the 70's as far as music goes. However, last spring I found a cd online called "Music for the advancement of hip hop," a VA disc released by Anticon. Track 3, aptly called "Untitled," caught me off guard. It had loops of acoustic guitars and horns with a slow paced rap on top. It was a style of hip hop that I had never heard before. I was instantly hooked. That track was, of course, by Buck 65, and since that day I have scoured the earth looking for anything I can get my hands on by this ex minor league baseball playing Canadian.

What I like most about Buck is that he sounds very honest and sincere. He's from Canada, which from what I gather, is not the land of gangsters. In his album Vertex there are 3 parts, each where he describes 3 innings of a baseball game he was in. A Canadian rapping about baseball, can it really get any better??

Regardless, he raps of life, insecurities and random thoughts; something I enjoy in lyrics. They may not be the deepest lyrics, but they somehow always keep me coming back.

On Square, his style seems to be changing some. Buck has never been the quickest of rappers. He likes to take his time. However, on Square, he takes even more time. The album consists of 4 tracks, each about 15 minutes, and each track containing about 5 separate pieces that flow seemlessly into the next. With this pace I don't know if you could really consider much on this album as rap. Rather Buck just telling stories to a beat, often he just uses spoken word. And the music here reflects this change as well. Buck has always dug deep for his samples, to paraphrase from a track on Vertex, he checks country and even heavy metal records. And that is what you get with him. One track could have samples from 70's Soul music, while the next could be the guitar from a Johnny Cash song. On Square he has turned down the pace even more so, almost a crawl. This isn't party music, this is the pace of music you could sit back, relax and read the paper to. Because of this I have trouble trying to categorize Buck to other people. It doesn't sound very similar to other so-called hip hop artists. More a combo of an avant-garde/folk/hip hop post partridge family style.

Square is the 4th and final piece of his Language Arts series. At the end of the path looking back it does not surprise me that we have ended up with an album like this, of this pace and style. It's not for everyone. However, with this release, Buck 65 remains one of the more creative individuals in the business and isn't afraid of being a bit different from the rest. I am looking forward to where he will go from here.

- Tyler Craft