''The Craft'' is the third studio album by American hip hop duo
Blackalicious
Blackalicious was an American hip-hop duo from Sacramento, California, made up of rapper Gift of Gab and DJ/producer Chief Xcel. They are noted for Gift of Gab's often tongue-twisting, multisyllabic, complex rhymes and Chief Xcel's soulful pr ...
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[ It was released on ]Anti-
Anti- is an American record label founded in 1999 as a sister label to Epitaph Records. While Epitaph's focus has mostly been on punk rock, Anti-'s roster includes gospel (Mavis Staples), country (Merle Haggard), hip hop (Sage Francis, The Cou ...
on September 27, 2005. Chief Xcel said, "''The Craft'' is our passion to bring discipline to this music, the passion to keep growing, keep stretching, keep doing things we haven't before." It peaked at number 102 on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart.[ As of 2015, it has sold 67,000 copies in the US.
]
Critical reception
At Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 22 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[
Jack Booty of ''Prefix'' gave the album a 7.0 out of 10, saying, " hiefXcel's production doesn't stray very far from its R&B and soul influences, but this time it comes without almost any samples, relying sometimes on players from a homebrewed funk band to create clearance-free beats instead."
'']Exclaim!
''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly Exclaim! print magazine publishes 7 ...
'' placed it at number 6 on the "Hip-Hop: Year in Review 2005" list.
Track listing
Charts
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Craft, The
2005 albums
Blackalicious albums
Anti- (record label) albums