While booming, speaker-shaking backdrops are the heart of the album, astute raps are the soul, and Wiley bares all, spitting straight-forward assessments on the struggle to maintain your identity and vision in a world intent on making you lose focus. It's hard delivering reality rap in a time when fake is the new real, but "Your Intuition," "Wise Man and His Words" and "Talk About Life" tackle topics like making mistakes, learning crucial life lessons, and getting grown in an earnest, honest and down-to-earth way.
But this is no brooding session: fun and feisty production keeps things literally and figuratively upbeat , with Wiley masterfully mashing up hip hop, garage, electro, dancehall and drum and bass into cool club tracks you can two-step or headnod to, whether it’s the brain-hijacking carnival melody of “Boom Boom Da Na Na,” the stuttering rimshots and sparse southern rap styling of “Yonge Street (1,178 miles long)” or the house music pulse of “One Hit Wonder.” Though some songs don’t sound as novel as others, most easily capture and keep your attention, at times even overshadowing the lyrics. But when things come together right, 100% Publishing has you partying as you ponder life.
If the boisterous beats aren’t enough to convince you Wiley’s got a lot of life left in him, he drops not so subtle hints (“Numbers in Action,” “Up There” and title track “100% Publishing”) that he’s still got the skills to pay the bills and steal the show (and bills will definitely be paid – the album title salutes the fact that he wrote, produced and mastered the release himself, meaning he’ll see the lion’s share of the profits). Staying true to self while strengthening and solidifying his sound as he seeks more success stateside, this album may be the one that help’s Wiley’s bank and buzz reach an accord.
published at Okayplayer.com