Album Preview: Sean Price's "Mic Tyson"

Sean Price kicks off the album with “bars better than yours.” On the Alchemist-produced intro, he sounds right at home on a beat filled with crashing cymbals and wailing guitars.

Sean said this record is Duck Down co-founder Dru Ha’s favorite. It's another sample-based Alchemist production. Sean P comes prepared with plenty of his dismissive gems: “I hit a line of white/I smoke a dub of green/Niggas call it purple/What the fuck you mean?”

Just as the name suggests, “Pyrex” is a gritty offering of drug talk and boastful rhymes. Producer Amp adds DJ scratches to the entire record. Again, Sean P picks up the pace with his one-liners like, “When I’m talkin’, the streets listen/When you talkin’, the streets dissin’.” Another standout in the second verse: “The CEO of your label is a basketball player/That means your shit is never coming out.”

P tells us the backstory of an ongoing inside joke between him and Ruste Juxx. Juxx claims that he wrote Sean's rhymes on Kimbo Price. P shoots down the claim and says he wrote joints on Ruste's The Execution album. On “Price & Shining Armor,” Juxx ends his verse with a line claiming that he penned P’s entire Mic Tyson album. After the Wool-produced track ended, P told us that he'll get Ruste back just as good.

Instead of naming “Title Track” the obvious—“Mic Tyson”—Sean explains, “If I wanted to win the title, this would be the track.” His dexterous wordplay is his tightest yet on the Eric G-produced banger. He even quips about battle rappers and how he runs circles around them.

9th Wonder makes his first appearance on “Straight Music,” where the veteran producer comes equipped with an ultra-smooth soulful backdrop. There’s no chorus here, it’s just Sean P going in with rhymes for three minutes.

On another Alchemist-produced song, P continues where he left off in part one of "STFU." A mean bass line and occasional scratches complement the production. Price rips with lines like, “This your man Sean/The opposite of a fucking Duran Duran song.”

Before P starts “Hush,” he tells us a story about how he came up with the concept. While attempting to put his 2-year-old daughter to sleep, he began to sing the “Hush Little Baby” lullaby. Then he turned it into a vicious rap with rhymes like: “Ruck gonna get you with the 9mm/If 9mm don’t do what it do/Gonna come back with a 40oz.” This serves as the track’s hook over some light strings courtesy of producer Khyris.

“I got a fascination with apes and Frankenstein,” Price said before previewing this Eric G-produced track. The posse cut features Ike and Ill Bill who hold down the second and third verses. This track is all about that grimy East Coast sound of the last generation's hip-hop.

Duck Down’s own Buckshot joins P on this Stu Bangaz-produced cut. He says the song's title is a reference to all the “big-headed niggas around my way.” The dusty production adds to the overall dark vibe of the record.

RDisrespectful rhymes like, “Make your mom suck my dick with BBQ sauce,” show Sean Price still has that hilariously disrespectful edge. The song begins with Pharoahe Monch’s bars, where he tells white people "please don’t recite the chorus.”

Sean originally wanted to have the late Professor X kick off this song. He described the song as having “an old school sucka MC vibe to it.” Evidence handles the production, offering one of the best beats on the album.

P claimed that he hasn’t heard the recorded version of this song yet, so he jumped right into the Beat Butcha cut, giving us a live performance. After a solid intro line, “Serial killer theme music is my rhyme,” it only got better.

Mic Tyson ends with another dose of aggressive rhymes. Beat Butcha lays down an instrumental reminiscent of early records from Boot Camp Clik. Sean P slips in a nice homage to Belly: “I’m the illiest nigga in Nebraska—I’m Method Man.”