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Chuck Hamilton has talent – you’d have to have Ray’s shades on not to see it. Outside Looking, Staff Development and Death of the Mixtape Rapper showcase the 21-year-old’s writing ability and tracks like Windows Media Player gave us a snapshot of the creative side of the Ohio-to-Harlem transplant who’s been able to sustain a higher than average level of creativity from start to current ‘finish’ of his career.

That being said, Sonic The Hamilton’s latest release, My Brain Is Alive, is a few quills short of a full set.

The most noticeable difference is Hamilton’s progressing tendency to include non-rap components to his music. Grounded For Life, the third track off of the release, has a significant part in the song’s melody being played by a guitar. More aggressive drum lines pervade the album and fuse rock and rap together for a hybrid sound. Ignore Ant, the fourth and track, includes shrill horns and a moving bass line that creates as dynamic a sound as his wardrobe/headphone combination.

Lyrically, Hamilton hasn’t departed much from his original lyrical formula. A backpack rapper in many respects, he still finds a way to get ‘thug’ style content in on some of the tracks. He’s like a backpack rapper who secretly likes Jeezy. He does the intellectual track, the introspective one then hits the listener with a joint with hood content – difference being he actually knows how to properly include allusions.

Literary technique aside, the writing didn’t have the usual snappiness and social commentary in it that the previous tapes did. It did, however, have more annoying, nasaly, singing stuff that ALWAYS sounds flat. Stop that.

This mixtape may be showing signs of Hamilton phoning in the effort – the best tracks off the tape were Freshmen Orientation, Something, and Cold Chillin’, the fourth, second and last songs to the end. Freshman Orientation and Cold Chillin’s sample-based production drives the songs hard and Something’s rock/rap hybrid sound hits the clutch, the gear and the gas for the listener. Three out of 14 songs, however, aren’t enough to carry any mixtape. Sir Ham might need to rethink his Lil Wayne-style ’saturation’ model and focus on putting together more songs like Brooklyn Girls.

I don’t want to rip on the title, because making a joke about how Hamilton’s brain might not have been alive when he put the mixtape together would put me entirely too close to  my 62-year-old father’s sense of humor – and I’m not ready to concede my 59fifty’s and Pumas for a house sweater that should have been tossed out years ago (Mom, that’s on you) and grey hair just yet (Dad, if for some reason you are reading…I, uh…I love you. There, all better?). I’ll take a page from Nas’ playbook and do what he did after his label pulled the title from Untitled – not even go there. We all get the point I’m making.

For more information on Charles Hamilton, Harlem’s “finest,” visit www.charleshamilton.blogspot.com.