A Piece of Strange is the third studio album by CunninLynguists. It was released January 24, 2006, by The LA Underground, a record label based in New Mexico.[9]
The “high-concept record”[10] tells the "tale of the pathway to and from sin".[11] The album was produced entirely by Kno, and vocals are by Kno, Deacon the Villain and Natti, who joined the group prior to the recording of the album.[12] Featured guest vocalists include Cee-Lo Green, Immortal Technique, and Tonedeff.
Deacon and Kno have both cited the album's importance to their careers in interviews, with Kno calling it a "turning point" for the group.[12] CunninLynguists toured domestically and overseas in support of the album, appearing with acts such as Depeche Mode, Kanye West, Bun B, and Pharrell Williams.[13][14][15]
A Piece of Strange received widespread acclaim from critics, with XXL calling it "soulful", "raw", and "sophisticated",[16] URB calling it "a piece of beauty",[8] Scratch calling it "top-shelf",[6] CMJ calling it a "beautiful...dense opera",[17] and The A.V. Club calling it "vast and ambitious".[18]
The album's cover art is by Becky Cloonan. Cloonan's collaboration with CunninLynguists occurred following her listing their song "Love Ain't" as something she was listening to in an issue of her comic Demo.[19]
Kno gets some hate, mostly online because he is a pretty open and honest dude that tends to rub some ppl the wrong way. I think the production on this album was pretty great. You can't deny that. Deacon is also slept the fuck on IMO.
SYM wrote:This and Dirty Acres. One two punch of great that still holds up all these years later.
loved both during release. Dirty Acres held up a lot better than this.
Kno's production is awesome and still is. His backlash came when he started acting like a fag when people would name his samples on whosampled.com or whatever.
I didn't know they were doing something for the anniversary till now. Sucks the vinyl is already sold out. Would have liked to get that.
Loved this album, and still listen to it at least a few times a year. IMO Kno is one of the most underrated producers ever. QN5 as a label never really seemed to get the props they deserved either, Pack-FM, Tonedeff, Mecca, and the rest of them were all pretty fucking nice on the mic, and their Asterisk mixtapes were always really good. Not to mention the E-Famm album, which is one of the most slept on underground records of that era. I feel like those dudes should have AT LEAST had Anticon/Def-Jux/Eastern Conference level fame, if not Rhymesayers level, they were far too slept on for how good they were.
Gonna go revisit Southernunderground now, followed by APOS and Dirty Acres. Just a phenomenal three album run.
hustler wrote:if you don't know that spiders protect you from ghosts, then i really dont know what to tell you.
absolutely adored this, when it first came out...it still gets to me, havent listen to it in a minute, but I remember thinking that the next album was much more advanced production-wise, though I didn't really listen to it that much at the time... bring back some memories, time just flies...
Philaflava wrote:Kno gets some hate, mostly online because he is a pretty open and honest dude that tends to rub some ppl the wrong way. I think the production on this album was pretty great. You can't deny that. Deacon is also slept the fuck on IMO.
I agree with most of this: basically that Deacon (and Natti for that matter) are really underrated. The production is great on this, and although I liked Kno's production during this era, I've always found him to be a pretentious clown in interviews.
But yeah, this is a personal classic for me, and pretty damn flawless minus the one verse that Kno just had to sneak in there.
