Ty Cizzler
Busy Guy (Really Good)

Main Offenders
Depth Perception (House Hold)

Vancouver's rap community has been strangely and sadly quiet this year, offering nothing of interest to people beyond its tightly defined borders. There's no better example of this than the new album by Ty Cizzler (aka Ty-C), once the scene's most promising young rapper, now just one of its many good-but-not-great veterans. The best song on Busy Guy is the punchline-packed "Eh Yo"–one of four excellent productions here by J-Nasty–but it was made almost three years ago, suggesting the Castlegar native hit his plateau long ago.

Main Offenders succeed where Ty-C does not, risking corniness in their deeply personal and socially engaged lyrics. The Offenders have been slinging homemade CD-Rs on Main Street for years now; Depth Perception represents their first foray into the wider marketplace, and it holds up very well, boasting excellent production by Engineer and fiercely-voiced, intricately written verses by Katch, Zacharia, and Aspire. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but the album compares very nicely with indie-rap of the Rhymesayers variety, and it's better than just about anything else the local scene seems capable of producing at the moment.

Links: Ty Cizzler on MySpace
Main Offenders on MySpace