5 posts tagged “rap”
...the music is just getting bad.
Or at least with respect to hip-hop, it has in terms of what hist the charts. And I have to largely agree. Like many musical movements that peak and degenerate into parody or derivative sonic slumming, hip hop on the radio is 99% dreck.
There is some great stuff out there, but the music public has been sold a dull bit of good.
...has the seriously get-down and way out cut Heatrays with Aceyalone.
Tight.
Here are some releases from APC and Aceyalone worth checking out:
You know, the only Mr. Lif album I have is his debut of DefJux, I Phantom, and it is a fine chunk o' rhymes. Status has this great clavinet vamp loop/sample that never gets tired, and Iron Helix has a great old skool vibe going on,
Dr. Dooom
First Come, First Served
1999
Kool Keith's delivery as an MC is unmistakable (and often entertainingly inchoate). Dr. Dooom was the identity he took up to kill off his Dr. Octagon phase, and while only releasing FCFS under the moniker, the results were exactly what works for Keith no matter what he calls himself that week.
The opening skit actually has him offing a supposed Dr. Octagon at a hospital ward, and then proceeds to run full throttle through a spatter-of-conscious set of word puzzles that only he can concoct. The titles alone only hint at the listenable madness: You Live at Home With Your Mom, Welfare Love, Live (Bald Headed Girl), Brothers Feel Fly, and Mental Case.
His flows are peculiar and idiosyncratic, combative, goofy, and unpredictable. It's Looney Toons meets Blaxploitation films as directed by Quentin Tarantino and the entire psyche-ward from Bellevue. Some of the short skits are the few areas where he loses even his own plot, but these are few and short.
Pick up some funky lunacy with a groove tonight.
Thirsty Ear 2003
What can I say, this is sometimes brilliant, sometimes colossally pretentious (and still pretty sharp). Off kilter rap, with really off kilter piano by Shipp. There is some sharp work here, in a collaboration that could have easily been a triumphant mess of avant-rap and freebop.
Instead we have an engaging collection of actually pretty accessible grooves, punctuated with sharp turns and sharper rhymes courtesy of APC (whose three MCs offer a full palette of vernacular acrobatics).
