(Photo By The N-Crowd Entertainment)
Sacramento based faction The N-Crowd Entertainment stays working extra hard, lacing us with new sounds from their R&B act Maryann. Her single “All I Ever Wanted” is from her new album Futuristic Always and features fellow crew members: Takticz, N8 The Gr8, and Detroit’s own Guilty Simpson.
N8 The Gr8 once again handles his business on the production end. The track is smooth and sounds are very light. The beat is built around heavenly high pitched piano keys and chords that are layered with orchestral strings every seventh and eighth bar. The drum loop is simple and classic sounding, with a boom bap swing to it, and beautiful falling synth notes around the four bar mark. The bass is laid back and has a Neo-Soul feel; it all complements Maryann’s very airy style of vocals perfectly and leads well into the rest of the verses as well.
Though this is Maryann’s single, we don’t hear a lot from her outside of the chorus, which is a little odd because she sounds so nice over the production when we do! She kills it with her bridge and honest hook which examines feelings of every struggling artist: “Sometimes things don’t go my way. I wonder if its a waste. Then I remind myself, all I ever wanted was this.” Its perfect and goes good with both Guilty’s and Takticz’ verses about moving past what a hater has to say when it comes to the grind.
The surprise for me was the standout verse by N8 The Gr8! Yes, the producer really came with it in the lyrics department and I enjoyed his flow and wordplay most over even the experienced rhymers on this one. He spits: “What you should get from it, we savage. Ill style with extra static, success addicts. Guilty of dope tactics, fantastic. Didn’t wanna go bad, I saran wrapped it.” I don’t know if its because I’m not used to hearing him or what but I ran that verse back multiple times, straight up.
**Final Thoughts: Overall, this is a nice and very well made track. It had all the right elements as well as the perfect features who all did a great job and STAYED ON TOPIC! If you like tracks that you can just throw on and vibe to, this is one. And if the rest of Maryann’s new album sounds like this, we all might want to consider traveling into the future by purchasing it from iTunes. -Real McCoy
