With XXL unveiling their “Top Ten Freshmen” in hip-hop earlier this month, there have been many smiles, many frowns and many “shoulda-beens.” Not to jump on the bandwagon–okay, that actually is EXACTLY what is going on here, but please pay attention–K. Sparks is definitely worthy of being a freshman next year (should XXL choose not to change the line-up after this review, of course). With A Day In The Life, this New York artist teams up with producer G.C. to give listeners just that: an album that illustrates a day in the life of the/an aspiring MC. Most of the time, people cringe whenever the word “conceptual” and “album” are put together (kinda like “romance” and “novel,” right?) but Sparks actually does a great job. He begins with waking up on “Good Morning,” proceeds to the job on “Slavin” and is on his lyrical grind with “Keep Movin.” The latter, a gritty exercise in lyricism, features a very entertaining verse from the one and only Sean P. G.C. also does his thing all throughout the album–providing boom-bap-meets-instrument-heavy beats for K. to rip through with attitude and heavy punch lines. Sometimes, the guest features can leave something to be desired though. Julius Francis, a popular feature on A Day In The Life, sounds really good on some songs, but on others (”Jezebel,” for example) he just does not deliver as strongly as hoped. This doesn’t detract too much from the project as a whole, however. K. Sparks shows that he can spit battle rhymes, introspective songs and diverse stories extremely well. Whether or not he really needed to announce his theme for the third verse of “Watching Me” to the fans is debatable, but the f00d-centric metaphors are impressive nonetheless. With younger hip-hop artists receiving more and more attention as the years go on, one can only hope that K. Sparks will get the shine he truly deserves.

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