If you like your hip hop uplifting, humorous, energetic and real, then I suggest you purchase Fat Club's, Leftoverz - The Mixtape Sessions, if you like to get deep and emotional into your hip hop, take the detour and steer clear of this one, because this is, in the words of Monk "hip hop electric shock for dodgey tickers". From start to finish Mister Monk and Turroe (with the help of Junior Disprol, Optimas Prime and Rola) are out to entertain you, Monk's beats make your head nod like you were sitting on the rear shelf of your nan's Allegro, while Monk himself and Turroe do every beat justice with their rhymes.

Production on this album is of the highest order on every track, Optimas Prime and Junior Disprol even get in on the action, putting their heads together to produce the awesome track 'The Rhyme Creators', one old school heads should definitely get their hands on (available for download in the FREE MUSIC section). Opening up the album is 'Here We Go Again' using a cut up version of Whitesnake's Here I Go Again, (a song that makes me realise why I got into hip hop in the first place and stayed away from the dodgey tight jeans and Pat Sharp hair cut). Straight after the brief intro it's into the real music, funky guitar, nice drums and Monk's opening verse "invasion force, morse code ring the alarms, it's a United Kingdom hip hop call to arms", nice.

'Decrease The Peace' with it's head nodding old school influenced beat, high energy vocal delivery and nice cuts throughout is a track that would get the coolest of wannabee gangsters out of their seats, if they didn't, I'm quite sure Turroe would drag them out. 'Love/Hate Relationship' is probably the track on this album which will impress most people, the Fat Club guys actually get quite serious on this one and it works for them. It's a clever track talking about their mixed emotions towards hip hop, which I'm sure most hip hop heads could relate to "for every line I write my feelings for her are weakening, she's no longer speaking in a tongue that sounds right, hanging around run down slums at night".

Other standout tracks are the banging 'Bristolease', with drums to die for, 'Ode To Folded Metal' with it's eerie background vocals and devil voices. One disapointment is the short track 'Word Flow' which is only around 50 seconds long and it is awesome, not sure why it's not a full length track, but, it should be. There is also a hidden track right at the very end of the CD called 'Shadow Spitter' make sure not to miss this, it is HARD, trust me.

Overall, it's a quality album that should be purchased, probably not to everybodies taste, but it was definitely to mine, on second listen I found myself skipping the shorter tracks on the CD, but the full length tracks are definitely tracks that should be heard.

Tracklist
1. Here We Go Again
2. Decrease The Peace
3. Love/Hate Relationship
4. Bristol Ease
5. Beat Boxing
6. The R (Featuring Rola)
7. Break The Tension
8. Stand Back!
9. Bitter & Twisted
10. It's The Fat Club
11. Ode To Folded Metal
12. Poison Pen
13. Black Crows
14. Return Of The Itchiban Monk
15. The Rhyme Creators (Featuring Junior Disprol & Optimus Prime)
16. Fatapella/Word Flow (Edit)
17. This Beer/Bats In The Belfry(Edit)/Shadow Spitter

Reviewed by Websta for Heroes Of UK Hip Hop 2005