There’s something you should know about me – I get bored of music quickly. I don’t like listening to the same stuff over and over again. I once had a flatmate who bought an album and listened to the same song over and over on our stereo, it drove me up the friggin’ wall so much I “accidentally” scratched the disc. If I go out to a club or rave, I can generally only handle the same genre of music for an hour or two before I get bored and listless. And I don’t like songs that drag on for ever, either. Two tracks mixed together for 10 minutes bores me to tears.

And whilst you may think this is some crazy notion developed out of thin air to justify my outlandish views, it’s a well known scientifically researched fact that the best songs are written to be less than 3 minutes. Lovely Rita by the Beatles. This Charming Man by the Smiths. California Dreamin’ by the Mamas & the Papas. Each of which is an undeniably wonderful pop song, each of which comes in at 2 minutes and 42 seconds long.

This probably explains my penchant for hiphop and breaks over other forms of electronic music. These genres are so diversified in sound, and the songs are generally pretty short, they simply gel with my taste.
Why am I telling you all this, I hear you silently scream. I’m telling you this so when I inform you I listened to The Lines (which comes in at 2 minutes 30 seconds) on Delta’s album The Second Story over and over and over, you’ll begin to understand this song is something truly spectacular.

In this one song, Delta, with the help of Mojo the Cinematic and Tom Brenneck and Dave Guy of the Dap Kings has managed to craft the perfect song. It starts off subtly with bass and percussion, with Delta’s rhyme about bad relationships dropped over the top, and builds into a gigantic funk chorus with brass, guitar and singing, and you can’t help but smile and groove away to it. Unfortunately its two verses are over so quickly, it leaves you begging for more.

Although nothing matches the greatness of The Lines, the rest of the album is still incredible. Death Song is an interesting piece, a melancholy rhyme about a cab ride with sparse death-march type horns filling the track. All Over with its minimal beats and funky latin horn breakdown, and Higher Level with Staen 1 are really enjoyable tunes.

In fact, The Second Story is so well crafted, full of clever rhymes and filled with great collaborations with artists such as Mark B and the Beatnuts, it’s my humble opinion that Delta’s profile should be bigger. I think it’s unfortunate he’s not as well-known as Hilltop Hoods or Downsyde, as great as they are, when Delta has the skills to craft better songs. But regardless of what I think about the state of Aussie Hiphop and the theory of popular music, The Second Story is simply a fantastic album and great follow up to The Lostralian.