K.O.

"To her credit, Miss Red is clearly a dedicated student of Jamaican music. Her lucid, confident phrasing is evidence of years spent listening and learning from the greats. True dancehall icons have stylistic calling cards-noises, vocal tricks or turns of phrase that crop up in nearly all of their songs. Stern has trademarks of her own, from the hyper-enunciated stage whisper she does on "Dagga" to the falsetto squeak that punctuates her phrases on "Shock Out," all of which prove that she's more than just a proficient mimic. A lot of these techniques had already started to develop on Murder, Stern and Martin's 2015 mixtape, a quick-and-dirty recording that formed the raw foundation of what they're doing here. On K.O their ideas are rendered in higher fidelity, and while not every track on here leaves a lasting impression, the album as a whole certainly does".

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"Miss Red (Sharon Stern) is an Israeli dancehall MC with an effortlessly sharp, excited flow, frequently punctuating her rapid-fire rhymes with squeaks, and she's just as adept at switching into a calmer, more detached mode. Ever since she spontaneously took the stage during a 2011 gig by the Bug (Kevin Martin), the two have been frequent collaborators, both on-stage and in the studio ... Both Martin and Stern are fully aware of how far removed from the Jamaican dancehall scene they are, and while they're faithful to some aspects of the genre, they don't sound like they're aping it, and they're certainly coming at it from their own perspectives. K.O. is their most successful collaboration so far, and a flat-out thriller above all else".

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