(Earshot/Inertia)

The leftovers, the unwanted vegetables from your plate, the excess members from Australian Idol, what you can get at 5am in your local club, or alternatively a collection of 8 tracks to support a tour and to keep one of hip-hop’s funniest groups in the public eye.

Ugly Duckling have been around for over ten years. In the fickle hip-hop market you don’t do that without some loyal supporters, and more importantly some dope skills. To support their tour of Australia this month, and on the back of last years great Taste The Secret (my introduction to the group), Ugly Duckling have chucked together some new gems and some old joints, intertwined with some more Meat Shake stories to close that chapter in their book. And the results speak for themselves.

Alongside some new material recorded specifically for this release, like Get Ready and Ring The Bell, are tracks like Almond Rocha - heard recently on DJ Format’s latest compilation and Celebrity, songs that were left on the cutting room floor when past albums were compiled. Before you write these off as weak or filler, do yourself a favour and have a listen, you (like I) will be pleasantly surprised.

Firstly, the beats, you can be sure Einstein hasn’t finished digging by a long shot. Staying true to his funk and horn driven roots he creates brilliant sound scapes for his MC partners to vibe off. In a day and age where too much of our music has become formulated, he can stand quite proudly as someone who will go the extra mile for a beat. As an added bonus included here is Einstein’s Brazilian Travelogue, a track that is entirely samples of words and music scratched together into a very smooth result.

So what of the rhymes? As always, the boys are having fun on the mic, bouncing off of each other and delivering their trademark punch line, flows, and catchy hooks. A couple of interesting tracks to peep are Elevators, written ten years ago, showing you just where they have progressed from, and their first ever collaboration with Something’s Going Down Tonight with Grand Puba. They have long been compared to groups like De La and Brand Nubian, with their witty rhymes and ability to rock a dancefloor, so who better to feature than one of the original Nubians in Grand Puba who process he can still hold it down with the best of ‘em.

Overall it’s a tidy, if somewhat short, release that will not leave fans disappointed. Standout tracks are the previously mentioned Something’s Going Down Tonight and Celebrity, yet there are no weak “filler” tracks present at all. For a group to have a spare 8 throwaway tracks as tidy as this you know they are something special, do yourself a favour cop the album then go and cop one of their unforgettable live shows.