Since the age of MySpace, compound subgenres are run of the mill, rarely jumping off a webpage. Emo/Novelty/Slide Guitar? Ok. Punk/Classical/Pop? Sure. But more often than not, any sort of self-labeling is either far off base or meant purely for entertainment purposes. When Allen Mask, describes his own sound as electro organic hip-hop, however, he is quite right. On his debut solo album, Pilot Season, Mask flawlessly blends hip-hop with a perfect touch of jazz and alternative rock. At times the album is a hybrid of The Roots and Phoenix; at others it is as if LL Cool J and Will Smith collaborated with CL Smooth. If all these influences somehow melded together under a watchful, cigarette smoking eye of Gil Scott-Heron, then you would have Pilot Season.


Mask – yes, that is his real name – transitioned into the hip-hop emcee he is today after ascending the ranks of North Carolina slam poetry, later performing with the state’s under-19 team at national competitions in high school. It was around the same time that Mask and five others from the Chapel Hill area formed the hip-hop jazz group Contradiction, for which he both wrote and arranged for. Mask chose to stay in his hometown for college and enrolled at the University of North Carolina. While Contradiction persisted through Mask’s first year, the emcee has independently gone on to continue his studies in jazz composition and won a songwriting competition through Essence magazine. Although he has taken a leave of absence from his post for his own project, Mask also founded and was co-president of UNC’s Vinyl Records, a student-run, non-profit record label.


Now a senior, Mask is set to graduate in May 2010 and plans on spending several years working on Wall Street afterward. And though this does mean that Mask will have a full-time job, there is no plan to halt his musical career, he plans to release another EP during the next year while in New York. In the meantime the focus is on Pilot Season. And even though his lyrical duties should not be overlooked, Mask says the project was meant to showcase his production, and it shows. Mask is also joined by a bevy of guests including Benton James from the Urban Sophisticates, Afika NX, Caitlin Watkins, Starr Miller, Stephanie Gray and a chorus by UNC’s male a capella group The Clefhangers. Allen Mask’s immediate future may be finance but his heart and many talents are in music. Pilot Season exemplifies it.

- Benn Wineka Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.