Seth Sentry: This Was Tomorrow

- Melbourne MC and all-round good guy Seth Sentry seems in no hurry to grow up, and nor should he be. If I see one more twenty-something year old dude with a wife, a couple of kids and a massive mortgage I'm going to flip out something fierce - and it's not because I have baby fever, let me tell you. Seth's debut record has definitely been a while in the making, and while the dude has been dropping jams and coming up in conversation for a couple of years now, it feels like This Was Tomorrow has been in the works , one way or another, since the twenty-nine year old first picked up the metaphorical mic like ten years ago.
Because of this tortoise-esque ability to take his time, Seth's debut doesn't suffer from any of the teething issues that come with young, inexperienced MCs stumbling a bit before bringing out anything nearly as coherent, confident and complete as This Was Tomorrow. The record paints a colourful picture that actually resembles my own life much more than most Aussie hip-hop, the plausable soundtrack to a million wastoid lives - young men and women struggling to tolerate living a regular life and striving for some unknown and perhaps unattainable goal, trying to find some peace amongst all the white-noise.
Lyrically Sentry wisely sticks to rapping what he knows, weaving the mundane into something much more grand. These are tales of modern Australian life, lived in sprawling cities and endless suburbia. They honestly and earnestly detail the existence of a generation that have mostly only first world issues to deal with.
This Was Tomorrow may not suit those hip-hop fans that can only get pumped up by larger-than-life, bloated and glorified gangster rap, but for everyone else, especially those kids that need something they can relate to, regardless of genre, they can take something from this record, with it's brilliant but modest and down to earth collection of songs. They were worth the wait. Despite there being a veritable well-spring of suitable jams that succeed in being totally banging, it's a relatively understated joint that takes my fancy, the penultimate track, "Where Was You?"- a slightly sombre, downbeat retelling of an undead invasion, a track that is both a fun little story AND gives Seth the time and space to flex his lyrical muscle, showing off his smarts. Good stuff and a great and exciting debut.

- Jay Edwards.