A New Magnetic Hip Hop Release - "Destiny Or Destination" By Mercury Waters.

Whenever many artists from the same area blow up, or at least garner critical acclaim, the saying goes that it must be something in the water. And for all we know it might just be Mercury. Mercury Waters is one of the many artists that grabbed the attention of a worldwide audience, while his arse stays safely put in - is it the D.C. area?
The brand of rap coming from that area - stuff like Oddisee - is so called retro/earth tones/traditional rap, as there's samples throughout the recordings, the songs have more soul than a half arsed player can ever tickle out of a keyboard and the lyrics are not about bang-bang, bump-bump, puff-puff rhetoric. Instead the soul searching is not just a journey to a dusty record shelve, but also into oneself or ourself.
Mercury Waters' album "Destiny Or Destination" is missing the high profile guest appearances. It's minus the attention distracting known producer contribution; instead we're treated to unknown folks amongst unknown folks. Actually the only people we have heard of are Craig Rip who produced "Raw In The Flesh" and Blakout if he's the UJ Empire dude, who's appearing on "The Bell Done Rang Remix." And he's only one among three guests, the others being Velben (a good sounding cat) on "Maybe Maybe Not" and Abb-D on "Consider This".

Thematically Mercury is very poetic. He does not really say things in the straightest ways, but rather puffs everything up with some more beautiful or elaborate descriptions. With that he reminds us a little bit of an Ill Poetic, what cannot help you much though, considering that Ill is another very talented whilst unfairly unknown cat. Therefore there are also moments of exploring in all the types that bugger can appear and manifest - and just one example is "You Alive." There are moments where Mercury manifests himself like on "Raw In The Flesh" and moments where he sounds like a lesser and tamer Chino XL voice wise and Ras Kass thematically like on "Pavement Pain." And just somehow he finds the time to also drop some braggadocio verses.

And maybe that's what can eventually make or break you enjoying this album: if this is a little too fancy a rapping for you, then the enjoyment will be less. If you don't mind or even feast on such a style, then Mercury Waters's album has to be something you must try to hunt down.
The title track "Destiny Or Destination" builds a bridge to a Little Brother with the hand clapping. But on top of that we get a great nightly vibe that even gives reason to the singing during the hook. Another great song is "Chaotic" produced by Flatworld Audio or the blues influenced "The Bell Done Rang" - even though this is the one time where the flow really is badly matched and a more sing songy style would be much more appropriate. "You Alive (Remix)" features one of the best beats on here, and even "Some Sort Of Outroduction" is kinda funny, even if it's a little bit like "Book Of Rhymes" by Nas. And then there are of course the stinkers like "Forever Always" with an annoying hook and a bad beat. It's definitely not advisable to pour some mercury in your water to sound like this artist here. It's probably cheaper to directly import tab water from D.C., cause the Hospital Bill will be a sucker. So whatever is in that water, Mercury Waters is another artists you may watch out for. He's not quite there yet to be your favourite rapper or producer, but this album is already rather good. (Review By Urban Smarts)

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