Category: Hiphop

Public Enemy: Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age (1994)

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Biting the hand that feeds.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 1992 the much-loved Public Enemy tasted their first cup of Haterade after releasing the concept-free semi-remix album Greatest Misses. Undaunted, they returned in 1994 with the brilliantly bitter Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, a fusillade of finely tuned aggression and progressive noises.

PE focused its rage on the supply chain of the record industry: morally bankrupt record companies, elitist and impotent music journalists, and the audience that supports them both. Or to put it another way, they had a big problem with their own label, critics and you, personally.

Gangsta rap was becoming the genre of choice among hip-hop fans and the labels responded by pumping out more gangsta rap, a product that PE found to be morally toxic to its audience. As keepers of the pro-Black agenda they were certainly not going to start writing songs about “beating bitches down”. (OK, they did write that in “Sophisticated Bitch” but that song was on the first album and that was, like, a long time ago and stuff.)

So had you just stopped purchasing gangsta rap and the culture of consumer crap it represented, they wouldn’t have had to record such R&B diatribes as “Give It Up”. Bad consumer. Stop it.

The utter uselessness of music critics is demonstrated in the hazy mule train of “I Stand Accused”, while PE publicist Harry Allen dissected the utter uselessness of major labels in “Harry Allen’s Interactive Super Highway”. Nine years before Apple’s iTunes Music Store debuted, Allen sharply predicted the legal sale of digital music and how it would empower the creators and destabilize the record industry.

The intensity of these messages is matched with unique sounds, live instrumentation and explosive, challenging rhythms. The eco-warning “Race Against Time” cleverly sloooooows down the beat to make its point. “Aintnuttin Buttersong” laments the propaganda of the “The Star Spangled Banner” while paying homage to Jimi Hendrix’s Vietnam-era interpolation, chaotic guitar included.

Flavor Flav even kicksed in a serious song with a remake of The Last Poets “The White Man’s Got a God Complex”. Flav wrestled the kinetic sparseness with a venom he’d never shown before:

I’m making guns! (Uptown, I’m God!)
I’m making bombs! (Uptown, I’m God!)
I’m making gas! (Uptown, I’m God!)…
Birth control pills! (Uptown, I’m God!)
Told the Indians I discovered them! (Uptown, I’m God!)…

The concept of “discovering Indians” returned with the hovering incendiary metal of “Hitler Day”, which rowdily recasted Columbus Day as a celebration of a 500-year genocide.

Now that’s gangsta.

THE FALLOUT: PE’s label Def Jam were not pleased with the album (shock!) and barely promoted it. Critics were sharply divided, depending if they felt picked on or not. Although “Give it Up” was a minor hit, the audience really, really wanted to keep buying that G-Funk, and Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age stalled.

Public Enemy didn’t record another non-soundtrack album for five years, but when they did they took their own advice. 1999’s There’s A Poison Goin’ On was released on their own label, as an MP3 album.

Muse… is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age is an extremely gutsy and extremely engaging album. Forward-sounding, retro-leaning and wholly unique.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Saul Williams would like some words with you.

Jungle Brothers: J. Beez Wit The Remedy (1993)

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More native, less tongue.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 1993, New York’s Jungle Brothers had oodles of respect but had yet to create a breakthrough album. These founding members of the Native Tongues rap collective dropped the well-regarded Done By The Forces of Nature in 1989, the next year they were commercially upstaged by fellow Tongues A Tribe Called Quest’s career-defining .People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. To ramp up their game they enlisted the expansive talents of producer Bill Laswell and some four years later they popped out the schizophrenic J. Beez Wit The Remedy.

Much like John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy, J.Beez sways back and forth between two poles, head-bobbin’ beat-heavy linguistic assaults and bizarre tone-free sound collage.

In the head-bobbin’ corner, The JB’s smoothly ride the beat of the crisp “40 Below Trooper” with scratched-in horn samples a-plenty. “Book of Rhyme Pages” begins with the active clacks of a typewriter (remember those?) and segues into a piston-tight flow:

Some see the end, but then some see nothing
The pages keep on turning and my DJ keeps on cutting.
My constant high on life combats stress and strife,
But there always comes a time when you must sacrifice
So my cells ripidy pop as the lovely lyrics drop
I’m never going back; I’m over stocked with stock
Cops and thiefs both practice same beliefs
So I run and make my own
So I don’t need grief

Over in the bizarre corner “Blahbludify” sounds like five different songs played simultaneously, all on defective CD players. Drum machines suffer from tremors, the codeine-slow vocals slur underneath shards of tinkly piano, and many sounds end without starting.

In “Spittin Wicked Randomness” their zooted-up raps glide over glass breaking and electrical hums, with beats that simulate a free-falling industrial elevator changing floors.

The deranged carnival organ and background shouting of “For The Headz At Company Z” is the ideal soundtrack for that sketchy, psychotic ice cream truck driver that makes all the local kids nervous.

By the time you get to the random snippet tapestry of “Man Made Material”, it’s clear that the Jungle Brothers intended to hijack rap and drag it into a new progressive new world.

THE FALLOUT: Their original album, titled Crazy Wisdom Masters, was rejected by their label repeatedly for over two years. After excising several songs, several mixes, the title and the producer, the now neutered album — retitled J. Beez Wit The Remedy — was still nutty enough to catch fans off-guard and J. Beez never caught on with the public. Once again, The Jungle Brothers didn’t release their next album for another four years.

It’s currently out of print but Amazon carries used copies and you can listen to tracks here from both J. Beez Wit The Remedy and Crazy Wisdom Masters:

So fresh it sounds like it was released two hours ago, J. Beez Wit The Remedy is a lucrative mind puzzle for the sonically enhanced.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Sly Stone’s first attempt to take you higher.

Neneh Cherry: Man (1996)

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As in “Man, what ever happened to her?”

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: Neneh Cherry’s unification of hip-hop and energetic pop music made her an international superstar with the release of 1991’s Raw Like Sushi, but her toned-down followup, 1993’s Homebrew, was an artistic advance yet a commercial retreat. And if you’re American, that was probably the last time you heard from her.

The rest of the world, however, was privileged to receive Man in 1996, a honey-coated slab of soulful electronica. Co-written and produced by her husband Cameron McVey, it sparkles with intellect and sensuality while decimating you with hard beats and grunge guitar.

The buttery smooth strings of “Woman” move like honey just before it drips out of the container, full of sweetness and anticipation, while Cherry reaffirms her mission statement:

You gotta be fortunate
You gotta be lucky now
I was just sitting here
Thinking good and bad
But I’m the kinda woman
That was built to last
They tried erasing me
But they couldn’t wipe out my past

“Hornbeam” sizzles with confidence, sailing in a sea of wordless cooing and strangled electronics, filled with the joy of pure sensual emotion, building and building, like a cocoon before it bursts.

Man does contain a massive international hit single in the Youssou N’Dour duet “7 Seconds”, its steely cool impassiveness starkly contrasts against the warmth of their voices.

Cherry shows off the swagger in her step in the trip-rock of “Kootchi”: a laundry list of the mundane things she likes about her lover:

I love the way you walk,
I love the way you talk
With your mouthful
The way you park on the sidewalk
The way you are in the car
I’ll make you love the way I behave
On my bad days

Belting this while a meteor shower of distortion rains over a military backbeat, her ability to sound demanding and vulnerable simultaneously is uncanny. Her vocal command travels down to the quiet alien calm of” Carry Me” and up to the bouncy sandpapery beat of “Together Now”. All the makings of hit record in America.

THE FALLOUT: Alas, her American record company was going through a “restructuring” in 1996 and declined to release Man, ever. It was a minor hit in the rest of the world, lovingly out of step with current music trends. Outside of guesting on other artists’ singles, Neneh Cherry has yet to record a follow-up album in the nine years since its release.

Man is available at Amazon and you can also listen to tracks here:

A rare humanistic electronica album, Man is worthy of seeking out, even if you live in the USA.

NEXT WEEK: Chocolate Genius turns to God, kinda.

Divine Styler: Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light (1992)

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Are you ready for the love of Allah, ambience and acid?

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: What was Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate smoking in 1992? Ice started singing with the hardcore punkish Body Count, Everlast turned into the Irish Cypress Hill with House of Pain, and Divine Styler fell into the abyss with the scary-ass freakshow of Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light.

Ever hear a song and think “This is just wrong. Songs aren’t supposed to go like that. Is something in my ear?” This is a whole album of those songs, each one more disturbing and psychically damaged than the last one.

Dropping the strict hip-hop of his previous album, 1989’s Word Power, Spiral delves into psychedelic speed metal, trip-hop, Elizabethan acoustic fingerpicking and jam-band blues rock while unveiling fiendishly intricate rhymes about his Muslim faith and psychedelic drugs. What he doesn’t do exactly is rap, although every other method of vocalizing is present and accounted for.

In “Am I An Epigram for Life” he asks himself muffled metaphysical questions while swirling down the drain of keyboard bloops. The bloops return in “Touch” where he whispers his beat poetry up against a melting CasioTone preset beat, which then decays into a funk march.

It’s unsettling to listen to “Love, Lies and Lifetime Cries” as it consists mostly of him pleading “They won’t let me in!” while he frantically knocks on a closed door. I wouldn’t open it either; he doesn’t sound like someone I’d want to let in the house. But his paranoid ranting over sickly oozing keyboards is highly intriguing.

“Grey Matter” was the radio single, as if wooden flute techno jazz was going to get him spot on “Yo! MTV Raps”. His eloquence is outstanding as it is avant-garde, as he goes way out onto the microledge with “Heaven Don’t Want Me And Hell’s Afraid I’ll Take Over. He pontificates, seduces and conjoles you with his oratory skills, one step from outright screaming. He saves that for “Mystic Sheep Drink Electric Tea” a buzzy slab of industrial grindcore.

Divine Styler kicks it super-old school, kinda, with the drums-and-space of “Euphoric Rangers” then stays in outer space with “Aura” where he raps over the sounds of a malfunctioning alien probe ship.

THE FALLOUT: Divine Styler impressively wrote, produced, arranged and played most of the instruments on Spiral, but his fearlessness caught hip-hop heads completely off-guard and it bombed. Divine Styler lost his production deal, his record label and eventually his freedom (if not also his tether to the material world).

Spiral is out of print but might be available from Amazon. You can also listen to tracks below:

Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light is unabashedly psychotic but worth the effort of a complete listen.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: What ever happened to Neneh Cherry?

Basehead: Play With Toys (1991)

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Messages in a bottle, of malt liquor.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: Ever have one of those perpetually tipsy college friends who’s deepest, most fully formed relationship is with beer? In 1991 Washington D.C.’s Michael Ivey, inspired by failed romances and the beers that accompany them, cranked out the album that would eventually make several “best album of year” lists and help solidify two different record labels: Play with Toys.

Ivey cut his intimate slacker hip-hop songs nearly alone on his bedrooms’ four-track recorder, mostly sparse guitar vamps over head-nodding drum breaks, and this low-fidelity touch makes his songs very endearing. He also is quite funny, in a Cheech and Chong sort of way, and his slurry low-volume singing voice draws you into his beer-goggle universe of loss, confusion and apologies.

In the droning funk of “2000 BC” he pines for the missing brain cells he’s lost through drinking, yet he sings a love song to his brew in “Ode to My Favorite Beer”, complete with old-school needle drops from Eazy-E’s “8-Ball”.

His friends show up in many of the songs, acting as a Greek chorus by commenting on the tunes during their performance, sometimes interrupting the song to the point of stoppage. “Brand New Day” follows his post-breakup emotional state, as he pauses the song several times to change his view on how sad or relieved he is to not be with his girlfriend. Then it stops again to listen to some nice breakbeats.

He gets even more emotional in “Not Over You”, getting drunker and more hostile as the song progresses:

So judge me true
by what I say, not what I do.
Why do folks continue to say
that I’m not over you?

The song eventually comes to a halt so his friend can find another song on the radio to calm him down. You can advance to the next track to see how well that worked out.

As if the fourth-wall shattering meta-commentary isn’t surreal enough, the entire album is presented as a band performance in a country and western bar. Yes.

THE FALLOUT: Released by the fledging indie label Émigré and re-released the following year by the fledging mini-major label Imago, Play With Toys was critically acclaimed for its focused eccentricity and twisted humor, yet never sold well. Basehead put out three more albums but hasn’t made a public note since 2001.

Play With Toys is out of print worldwide, but you can pick a used copy from Amazon and you can hear selected tracks below.

Provocative and ridiculous, Play With Toys sneaks up on you with delight, like the pint before last call.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Fishbone fights for a taste of “Reality”.

Q-Tip: Kamaal The Abstract (2000)

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Thanks for advancing music, now drop dead.

Purchase this album: Amazon

(The following article was written in 2005, but in 2009 the album was finally released.)

THE SCENE: As the ex-leader of the beloved conscious rap group A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip irritated his fan base with his unexpectedly jiggy solo debut, 1999’s Amplified. Sensing that he wasn’t cut out to be a fur-wearing mainstream rapper he completely flipped the script for his next album, 2000’s Kamaal the Abstract.

Much like Sting did for Dream of the Blue Turtles, Q-Tip also assembled a tight team of jazz musicians and crafted a sweet album of finely textured pop songs that crackles with deep grooves and the joy of live band performance. Kamaal the Abstract humbly melds the best aspects of acid jazz, hip-hop and alternative rock into an ambitious and exciting new form.

“Feelin” jumps in with a seemingly ordinary hip-hop track but expands like a peacock plume with chunky guitars and radio static. After rapping and scatting for a bit it’s all about the O.G. organ solos, played so vibrantly you’ll forget that it goes on for minutes. It’s full of “walking down the street on your way to the party” spirit.

Q-Tip’s commitment to the flow of the groove is so sincere he sometimes vanishes altogether, as he does in “Do U Dig U”. He introduces his spacey and souful singing voice then lets the flutes take over, gilding slinkly across crisp percussion, recalling those smoky bohemian clubs with the small round tables and red lights that serve mojitos.

The electric piano-driven “Barely In Love” warmly invokes the buzz of a new crush with the most joyous hand claps you’ll hear outside of a gospel choir:

When you really think about it
love is truly powerful
the undeniable force
that makes it magnetic
when you can’t explain
when you do
what you do
can’t nobody take away
when you do
what you do

His band turns up the intensity in “Heels”, his playful ode to women’s shoes, with stomping drums and funky xylophone. “Abstractions” is a musically dense bottle rocket of fun where he repositions himself, the new advanced model Q-Tip, as a playful musical adventurer.

THE FALLOUT: Arista Records treated the album with all the love of a stripper at a church picnic, branding it “uncommercial.” Promo copies were released to hip-hop and rock journalists, who alternately raved it up or ripped it to shreds. A Spike Lee-directed mini-movie was commissioned and abandoned. A 2002 release date was set and cancelled, causing Q-Tip to negotiate a release from his contract. Five years after it was completed, Kamaal the Abstract is still lying somewhere in Arista’s vault.

UPDATE: It’s now available from Amazon and you can listen to tracks here:

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Introducing Konoko N°1: the world’s only electrified Congolese trance punks.

New Kingdom: Paradise Don’t Come Cheap (1996)

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Way beyond funky, this one’s downright grimy.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 1993 hip-hop duo New Kingdom released the lo-fi and poetic Heavy Load during the dawn of Death Row Records “G-Funk era”. Although it was critically well received Heavy Load wasn’t remotely gangsta and thus attracted little attention from the gangsta-buying public. Undaunted, partners Nosaj and SebStop spent three years crafting their followup, the hickory-smoked masterpiece Paradise Don’t Come Cheap.

Reckless and scorching, it’s an hour-long ride in the passenger seat of a ramshackle big rig on the hottest day of the year, and you’re all out of lemonade. Musically thick and vast it blends live half-speed hiphop beats with all sorts of pedal steel guitars, organs and dust. That’s right, dust. I don’t how one records the sound of microscopic layers of sediment but it’s on every track and it sounds fantastic.

Both Nosaj and SebStop don’t rap as much as rasp over the tracks, as if Tom Waits and Ol’ Dirty Bastard got drunk and planned a road trip, evidenced by the first song “Mexico or Bust”:

Mexico is callen me and damn if it ain’t all in me.
To pack my bags and grab a crate. Ain’t nuthin better than an unplanned escape.
Hell ain’t catchin up to me no way. I’m taken backroads riding side of the bus.
Wavin at runaways. Wanderlust has got us. Both lookin for a better day.

The guitars sound like lazy rattlesnakes uncoiling in the noonday sun as the drums lurch over a slowed down Texas-two step beat. Amazing.

The title track “Paradise Don’t Come Cheap” is a theme song in search of a movie, with its 007-esque spy horns and its own referencing of cinema desires:

Rented one bedroom upstairs in the attic. Off the wall murphy style bed.
Old black and white read nuthin but static. Caliber she lay like a lady side my head.
Whisper in my ear justify my bad habits. Mexican Gold had me sinkin in the mattress.
Careful what you wish for cuz it just might happen. As strange as it looks..the stranger it seem. It feels as if I’d been stuck inside a movie screen.

Lyrically the songs are about changing ones’ scenery, whether its surviving Armageddon (“Horse Latitudes”), traveling to outer space (“Journey To The Sun) or merely being “Suspended In Air”, all delivered by a unique and gritty flow that sounds ageless and primordial. On “Terror Mad Visionary” they come across like outlaws transmitting secret directions over a cheap AM radio, while on “Unicorns Were Horses” they testify like preachers stuck in an overly hot revival tent.

Their unique voices and twisted poetry cuts through the swamp of dusky sonics, which is no easy feat. At any given time all the turntable scratches, metal power chords and echoed beats merge into one pulsating, throbbing mass of sound. The sound of escaping from Hell, or perhaps escaping to Hell.

THE FALLOUT: It was a hit with alternative rock critics, who get their records for free. MTV gave “Mexico or Bust” a few spins but Paradise Don’t Come Cheap went mostly ignored by the public at large. In 1998 their label, Gee Street, was acquired by V2 and many artists were, um, dropped. But in 2005 New Kingdom finally announced plans to record their follow-up. Yay!

Paradise Don’t Come Cheap is out of print worldwide except for Japan, where they’ve always had an appreciation for odd music. If you don’t feel like paying import prices, used CD versions are easy to find, like right here. It makes great traveling music. You can also listen to samples here:

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: TV On The Radio infiltrates indie rock by wielding the power of electronic doo-wop.