"The Ecstatic" by Mos Def

(Downtown Records)

This week Mos Def released his fourth solo album The Ecstatic. In my review I discussed how this marked a promising return to something closer to the promise that he showed on his solo debut Black on Both Sides (1999), while also leaving something to be desired for his next projects. On The Ecstatic Mos balances the rock interests that dominated his second album The New Danger with his true-school hip hop style. There were times when his habit of singing his way out of a song sapped the album's energy, and hopefully he'll soon abandon such third rate Andre 3000 imitations. Still, The Ecstatic is easily Mos' second-best album, and proves that he's still capable of terrific hip hop (something that his last album, the atrocious True Magic, had left me doubting). Click here to read the whole review.

Goodbye 20th Century

Last month, four marquee rappers who were huge around the turn of the millennium dropped hugely anticipated albums on the same day. In my feature on the new albums from Eminem, Busta Rhymes and Method Man and Redman, I discuss how each is trying to adapt to a rap industry they don't really understand and haven't been competitive in for between five and ten years. While Eminem's Relapse comes off mostly as an empty parody of his former work, and Busta seems lost, over-the-hill cause on Back on My B.S. (making the album's title deeply ironic), Meth and Red manage to recreate the amazing chemistry that made their original Blackout! (1999) such a thrilling record. Blackout 2 comes off as the best of the lot, and though Eminem sold plenty well, it seems pretty clear that he, like Busta, are completely disconnected from their former audiences, unlike Meth and Red. Click here to read the whole feature.

"The Last Kiss" by Jadakiss

(Def Jam Recordings/Roc-a-Fella Records)

After a tragic several month hiatus from music criticism (largely due to the lack of rap releases in the first quarter), don't miss my first hip hop review of 2009, Jadakiss's The Last Kiss. The MC someone always argues is the best alive offers another frustrating album. The mixture of brilliance and disappointment on the over-long and over-assisted record is all too typical of mid-career rappers these days (I'm thinking of Nas and Busta Rhymes, among others), who can sell enough on name-recognition and one catchy single that they really don't need to try. With some exciting new releases on the horizon (Mos Def, Missy, Mr. Lif, and a host of promising rookies), hopefully 2009 will start looking up after this slow start. Read the whole review here.

Fados

Don't miss my review of Spanish director Carlos Saura's latest film, Fados, about the genre of Portuguese music fado whose origins come from 19th century Lisbon's working class port-side neighborhoods. The music has undergone several adaptations over the 20th century, most notably the difficult assimilation of influences brought by immigrants from Portugal's American colonies, and occasional incorporation into the ghettoizing category of "World Music." Rather than smooth over these and other tensions, Saura presents the music in a very stripped studio landscape of strong warm colors and monumental mirrors. Rather than using interviews and archival footage, the story emerges from the music itself. Keep reading about Fados in my full review.

Lately

It's been forever and a day since I posted anything to this blog, but I'm trying to be better about staying updated and linking to my work elsewhere.

I've been writing full time for the list-themed blog Listicles.

I've been writing my usual slate of film, music and art reviews for The L Magazine (Taken, The Lodger, Serbis, Donkey Punch, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Notorious, Top 10 of 2008, Dust, Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak, Beyonce's I Am... Sasha Fierce).

I've begun a weekly art column Wicked Artsy for The L Magazine's blog (first installment: Meaning in Saturation).

An article I wrote about Chelsea's elevated public park The High Line appeared on the cover of the latest issue of ARTisSpectrum Magazine.

And a recent academic article on hip hop and Busta Rhymes will be posted soon.

Also, as I begin a new class entitled "Media and Architecture" I will be posting related materials on a regular basis.

"Year of the Gentleman" by Ne-Yo

(Def Jam Recordings)

Ne-Yo's third album in three years starts like a spaced-out blend of Michael Jackson and Usher (who's already a singing, dancing MJ homage himself), set to a digitized toolbox of 80s pop production styles. That vocal lineage isn't surprising, Ne-Yo's written several songs for Usher and is rumored to be involved with Michael Jackson's forthcoming album. In fact, Ne-Yo's transition to superstardom is one of those backstage success stories: he wrote chart-topping songs for just about every pop star of the last decade before making his own name.

The reigning king of suave pop-R&B (as opposed to R. Kelly's more gangsta-fied sub-genre) begins Year of the Gentleman with a bang. 'Closer' starts with pumping base, slows for an acoustic guitar interlude, then blends the two into a mounting affair of snappy samples and squeaky sound effects. 'Nobody', meanwhile, sounds uncannily like an updated Michael Jackson classic (something from Thriller or Bad, probably). The self-conscious dance floor serenade 'Single' (produced by Polow Da Don) rounds out an engrossing opening.

Things start to go downhill though, when the next track, 'Mad', sounds almost identical. By the time Ne-Yo whips out a line like "I won't attend your pity party, I'd rather go have calamari" on 'So You Can Say', it's already clear the album's second half is fishy. There are a few more gems here, like 'Miss Independent', a gentle, clubby love song updated with an eye to gender equality. 'Back to What You Know' is also memorable for being largely instrumental on a predominantly cybernetic album. In fact, overly uniform production helps keep this from being more than a routine R&B release.

Another part of Gentleman's problem is the lack of any guest appearances. For an artist whose ubiquity is partially a result of his collaborations (both as a hook-singer for rappers and a verse-writer for other singers), the decision to go it solo over eleven tracks was admirable, but risky. The single-handed album is sort of like the Mt. Everest of R&B, and despite Ne-Yo's recent ascendancy (as he sings on 'Stop this World': "I've never felt so high as I do now"), his career hasn't peaked yet.

A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.

"LAX" by The Game

(Geffen Records)


The Game's album titles tend to be more revealing than intended. His first, 2005's The Documentary, claimed raw street level objectivity but also foreshadowed the fictional street stories and publicity beef that would soon follow. 2006's Doctor's Advocate was a frenzy of name-dropping, much of it reserved for Dr. Dre, the title's medical expert. Shortly after the album's release though, Game and Dre (the engineer of so many gangsta rapper's careers) had a major falling out. The advocate had been dismissed. With LAX, Game is again saying more than he means. Named for his hometown's airport, the album marks the departure of a hip hop subgenre, the end of gangsta rap's journey to the top of the charts and back down.

Game will never be remembered as a great gangsta rapper – a fact sadly confirmed here, on the weakest of his three albums – but he will go down as the last "big" gangsta rapper. After the disastrous turn in 50 Cent's career, the failure of the refashioned gangsta Busta Rhymes (brought to you by Dr. Dre, who else?), and the takeover by the Kanyes, Weezies and Lupes, Game is the only guy left rapping hard about drugs, cars, guns, women and (occasionally, evasively) his feelings. How fitting then that LAX is book-ended by prayers from one of Game's biggest East Coast predecessors, DMX. More fitting, even, is Ice Cube's appearance on the chorus of the disappointing 'State of Emergency'. The first man to completely inhabit the gangsta rapper paradigm appearing with its final incarnation – at least in the current cycle of hip hop styles, presumably we'll see a resurgence of the gangsta somewhere down the line.

Tellingly, some of LAX's best moments come from those artists who've slowly edged gangsta rap off the hip hop charts. This is Game (no longer apprenticed to gangsta enabler and media mastermind Dr. Dre) trying to adapt to his shifting fortunes. Lil Wayne provides a roboticized hook on the melancholic Cool & Dre-produced 'My Life', a moving, optimistic rumination on death and perseverance: "ain't no bars, but niggas can't escape the hood/and it took so many of my niggas that I should hate the hood/but it's real niggas like me that make the hood." Meanwhile, 'Angel' featuring Common and produced by Kanye is a terrific melding of styles and sounds. Game and Common casually wrap their words around Kanye's amazing Gil Scott Heron-sampling beat, a strangely engrossing hybrid of fluttery, synthy psychedelia and deep, funky West Coast smoothness.

As with other "big" rappers, a Game album is as much about production as it is about the Angeleno's lyrics. Generally, LAX falters where The Documentary and Doctor's Advocate were non-stop contests of one-upmanship by the most gifted producers around. Aside from that terrific entry by Kanye, two excellent (if successive and suspiciously similar) Cool & Dre beats, and a handfull of others, the majority of LAX's 19 tracks are disappointing. There's nothing here as amazingly awesome as Timbaland's space anthem 'Put You on the Game' from The Documentary, or Just Blaze's drum-fueled party-starter 'The Remedy' on Doctor's Advocate.

The overwhelming absence of such incredibly upbeat tracks isn't entirely surprising though, given LAX's ostensible subject. Taken as a swan song for a surprisingly resilient subgenre in a particularly short cultural cycle, Game's inadvertent goodbye to gangsta rap (possibly his final solo album, he claims), is appropriately somber. From the moody opener 'LAX Files', through the Eazy-Biggie-2Pac memorial 'Never Can Say Goodbye' and the closing MLK Jr. elegy 'Letter to the King' with Nas, LAX isn't the state of the union album that Game's first two were. Instead – as the album's airport title suggests – it sounds like the gangsta rapper's last stop, his final destination on a decades-long journey Westward.

A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.

"Pro Tools" by GZA/Genius

(Babygrande Records)

As opposed to more visible Wu-Tang Clan members, GZA isn't prone to grandiose releases like Method Man's spectacular solo failures and Ghostface's uneven biannual twenty-track epics. He's also less extraterrestrial than co-founding crony RZA, keeping one foot in the rap game while the other rests comfortably in the stylized Staten Island of the Wu's Shaolin. His '95 classic Liquid Swords thrilled fans of the latter universe with its kung fu samples, Five Percenters mythologistics and bounteous RZA production, while recent releases have been mostly earthbound, with albums since 1999's Beneath The Surface remaining, for better or worse, in some sort of dialogue with the prevailing trends of independent and mainstream rap. GZA doesn't capitulate to the mediocre tyranny of rap's indie and commercial factions though, but records his creative, rippling, effortless rhymes on some distant planet in the DMZ between the universes of commercial compromise and indie obscurantism, a planet all his own that still flies the Wu's iron flag proudly (if not so prominently as before).

This sixth GZA album features only two RZA beats (and one terrific verse on the closest Pro Tools comes to the often compulsory Wu posse cut, the awesome 'Pencils') but they're among the album's many highlights. The first single, the 50 Cent-dissing 'Paper Plate' (does 50 even merit dissing anymore, especially by someone so unambiguously more talented?), is a moody gem with GZA letting loose for nearly three uninterrupted minutes while RZA layers then peels off various drum, synth and chime samples. Other producers do good by GZA, with the MC's breathless cross-country car-themed narrative matched wonderfully by Jose "Choco" Reynoso's pumping guitar and brass on the thrilling '0% Finance', and exchanging rhymes with his son Justice Kareem on Bronze Nazareth's booming, nostalgic 'Groundbreaking'. The soulful 'Alphabets' and chopped up '7 Pounds' keep Pro Tools's first half exciting, with GZA treating the wild sampling of soundscapes like a lyrical lab wherein he makes good on each successive experiment. The second half slows noticeably ('Firehouse' and 'Path of Destruction' are merely decent on an album with a high average), though a sudden thematic shift makes for a triumphant ending built around two movie-themed tracks. First, GZA applies his storytelling skills to the horror genre on the whispered creeper 'Cinema', then RZA closes things off (save a serviceable live bonus track) with 'Life is a Movie', a dramatic, steadily mounting rock mash-up. Like some of its best tracks, Pro Tools is short and satisfying (over half the songs last three minutes or less), proof for those who can find this isolated planet (and those who've lived there for years) that GZA is among the most consistently great MCs around.

A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.

Two Shows at MoMA Right Now...

That Don't Involve Salvador Dalí or Pre-fab Housing

Sure, shows about crazy mustachioed Basque surrealists and homes made in factories are interesting (seriously, Home Delivery and Dalí: Painting and Film are great exhibitions), but they're also perpetually packed and difficult to enjoy after the first half-hour MoMA opens its doors (at 10:30am Wednesday through Monday). Two less-popular (and more brainy, weird...) exhibitions well-worth your crowd-ducking moves at MoMA these days deal with very specific artistic production at fairly specific times and places.

The newest is Looking at Music (through January 5, 2009), an exploration of (mostly) American multi-media art beginning in the 1960s with the sudden wide availability of audio-tape recorders, portable cameras and electric guitars. A wall-sized projection of a close-up on John Lennon smiling benignly (filmed by Yoko Ono in 1968) greets visitors and bluntly states a recurring theme in the show: the intermingling of rock and roll and early video artists in America's 60s and subsequent avant-gardes. Accordingly, several music video-looping TVs occupy the show's second room (featuring The Beatles' "Penny Lane" and Bowie's "Space Oddity" among others), and an accompanying screening series features a plethora of brilliant short films set to hot tunes both classic and recent. There are also collections of envelope-pushing music sheets and indie magazines from modernist musicians and composers that will certainly thrill the music theorists in the audience.

Multi-media videos and installations are the bread and butter of this show though, so Laurie Anderson's "Self-Playing Violin" (1974), standing staunchly upright as if saluting gallery-goers while it solos, is a particularly fun entry (especially when one reads that Anderson used to accompany the violin on another instrument in live performances). Meanwhile, Joan Jonas's "Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy" (1973), a video of the artist performing a variety of roles for the camera while donning a series of masks and peering into mirrors, questions how one performs in everyday life and to what extent the camera undermines those performances. It's an effective exercise, boiling ideas Altman, DePalma and Romero have spent entire films (careers?) addressing down to a clever shorthand. Works from the likes of Nam June Paik, Jack Smith, Bruce Nauman and John Cage round out a dense and (thankfully) small crash course in the seminal early works of multi-media and mixed-media art.The second easy-to-miss but not-to-miss show recently opened at MoMA, Kirchner and the Berlin Street (through November 10) looks at Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's densely creative period in Berlin between 1913 and 1915. The core of the show is a series of large-scale portraits of sex workers on Berlin's streets, rendered in an incredibly jagged and enchantingly colorful aesthetic. To one side of the central series we see smaller drawings and prints (some studies for the larger works, others stand-alone pieces) taken from the period that feature similar subjects from Berlin's bustling nightlife and streetscapes. At the dim gallery's opposite end are works from Kirchner's previous period in Dresden as a member of Brücke (a group of Expressionist painters he co-founded).

Taken as a whole, the show is an argument for Kirchner's contribution to German Expressionism, and for the vitality (and daring) of this phase in his career. The style of the works clearly falls under the umbrella of "Expressionism", but it's also starkly individual, Kirchner's highly-developed distortions evoking a bustling city's rich street life, under whose elegant fashions and urban rituals a not quite covert brand of salesmanship (saleswomanship, really) thrived. In one work, "Potsdamer Platz" from 1914, a war widow dons a veil while walking leisurely, announcing her mourning but also her availability to all those she passes (a frequent practice in post-WWI Berlin, we are told). His recurring choice of the liminal sex workers as subjects also intimates Kirchner's isolation in the big bad city, experiencing a rich public life that is nonetheless deeply isolating. So head to MoMA and avoid the cattle lines of alienating crowds and find some gems in these satisfying, intimate exhibitions.

This double review also appears on The L Magazine's "Your Blog About Town."

Patti Smith: Dream of Life

Directed by Steven Sebring

Listening to Patti Smith’s music or watching footage of her raw, explosive performances (most of which is withheld until the second half of this documentary), you’d doubt her likeliness to be quoting William Blake backstage or musing on the differences between Picasso and Pollock while painting in her studio. Best known for her music and its part in developing American punk rock, poetry comes off as Smith’s motivating passion (Sebring accompanies her to the gravesites of Blake, Shelley and Ginsberg).

Outside performances and painting, Smith’s verbose honesty, warmth and shyness come in surprising contrast to her raging stage persona. Sebring quietly crafts his very effective portrait with this psychological profile taking precedence over stargazing. Smith’s only voice-over is a deadpan timeline of her life recited during the opening minutes that comes off as practically sarcastic, a parody of the obligatory conventions of the artist biopic. In the end, we don’t learn the exhaustive details of Smith’s career or even her personal biography, but anybody seeing this film will know exactly how to speak to her should they meet her one day at a poetry reading.

In fact, for making his feature-length debut Sebring seems very confident, foregoing any thesis-pushing structure and opting for an expressively edited, casually beautiful portrait excised from footage shot following Smith for over a decade (lots of crispy black and white scenes, and fuzzy, meditative cut-aways of landscapes gliding past in a colorful blur). The result is not the crash course – detailing Smith’s musical career and its significance – some unfamiliar viewers might be hoping for. As the title indicates, this is a film about the entire life of an enigmatic woman who writes music and poetry, sings, paints, raises children, has living parents and a deceased husband, and is close friends with some of the most significant members of America’s recent modernisms.

A slightly awkward living room acoustic jam session with Sam Sheppard is more interesting and revealing than any of Smith’s concert footage. Elsewhere, surprising screentime is devoted to poring over the items strewn about Smith’s home, slow pans fetishizing her various possessions as if searching for some hidden clue to her psyche hidden among browned pages and rumpled baby clothes. In such scenes she also becomes a kind of time capsule for a recent moment of bustling cultural vitality and possibility, the magically remembered 70s and 80s whose arts were exciting and whose New York was gritty (scenes at the Chelsea Hotel or CBGB stroke a kind of collective nostalgia).



A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.

"Untitled" by Nas

(Def Jam)

So hip hop isn't dead after all, though you might not know it listening to Nas's first album since he rang the culture's death knell two years ago. After headline-grabbing hype sparked by Untitled's original title – the Wal-Mart-rejected Nigger – the final product is disappointing (Unfulfilled Promises might have been a better backup title). Of course that's pretty much what we've come to expect from Nas, whose last few albums seem assembled from samplings of his former selves: Illmatic's rugged street poet (Nasty Nas), It Was Written's bling-bragging gansta-superstar (Nas Escobar), and Nastradamus's crap-spewing couch potato (um, Nastradamus?).

Untitled might be the first to be dominated (in spirit if not in actual skill and style) by a new Nas, the rap industry's political unconscious. Sadly, the record comes off like its shortest track – 'Project Roach', a horrendously muddled pest-project dweller analogy – a good idea poorly executed. Nearly half the 15-song album investigates the contemporary semantics of "nigger", but only a couple of those songs prove genuinely insightful (none approaches the intelligence of Wale's 'The Kramer' from his Seinfeld-themed The Mixtape About Nothing, available for free download here). On 'N.I.*.*.E.R. (The Slave and The Master)', Nas simplistically conflates heritage and his own nagging predilection for conspicuous consumption: "descendant of kings/it's necessary I bling/put rims on everything/wear Timbs on every scene". On the breathy, quietly brilliant title track, Nas expands the term to all oppressed classes: "no matter what color you are, everybody niggas/you can stand by and watch or you can march on with us." On the album-closing Obama endorsement 'Black President', Nas seems dangerously close to reducing partisan politics to racial dualism. Conspicuously, that song samples a line from 2Pac's 'Changes', but the late rapper's semantic recuperation of "nigga" on his debut album ("I'm Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished") is still more empowering than most of what Nas musters here.

With all the bloated politics, the good non-"nigger"-themed tracks on Untitled are welcome relief, the bad ones frustrating Nastradamus-era throwaways. The electric guitar-fueled 'Sly Fox' (produced by Dead Prez's stic.man) is an awesome mainstream media attack, and the Busta Rhymes-assisted, Mark Ronson-produced jazzy woman-as-food romp (or is it food-as-woman?) 'Fried Chicken' provides some welcome humor amidst the self-seriousness (bring back the fun, pre-Aftermath Busta!). On the opposite end, laughable entries like the Cool & Dre-produced 'Make The World Go Round' ("Y'all living trendy on pennies/I cop plenty Fendi", good for YOU, Nas), the UFO-themed 'We're Not Alone' (what the fuck, Nas!?) and 'Breathe' (just listen to Fabolous's same-named track instead) should have been excised. Embarrassingly, the best track on Untitled is the lead single 'Hero', an engrossing sci-fi epic of a song. Not since Salaam Remi's 'Made You Look' has an adventurous beat choice pushed Nas's flow to new heights like this booming, trippy, synth-speckled anthem from Polow da Don. Generally though, careless rhymes and poor beat selection (as per usual with Nas albums) makes for some aggravating earsores throughout Untitled, with the good narrowly outweighing the bad. As he proclaims (in a telling, contradictory statement) on the 'Hero' chorus: "can't leave it/the game needs him/plus the people need someone to believe in/so in God's Son we trust/'cause they know I'm-a give 'em what they want." You rarely give us exactly what we want Nas, but we still need to believe in you.

A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.

"Jeanius" by Jean Grae

(Blacksmith)


There’s no good reason Jean Grae isn’t a superstar (except, you know, rap industry misogyny), and this long-delayed collaboration with ex-Little Brother producer 9th Wonder is the strongest proof yet. Begun years ago, leaked, shelved and now revamped, Jean and 9th are still a perfect, flexible fit. With minimal guest appearances and the perfect balance of variety and consistency in both vocals and production, this is a great rap album in the Illmatic mould. Gone are the over-thought concept songs of Jean’s 2003 EP The Bootleg of the Bootleg, and the directionless filler that weighed 2004’s This Week down in its second half.



9th’s moody, elastic beats sprinkled with soul and funk samples are his best since his 2004 Murs 3:16 The 9th Edition collaboration with L.A. indie-rapper Murs (‘Billy Killer’, meanwhile, is among his best tracks ever). Jean has never sounded this good, with her trademark sense of humor and braggadocio continually twisting her woman-in-a-man’s-game position to her advantage, as on ‘This World’: “I’m entertaining, yes, attacking like Dick Cheney’s chest/but lacking nuts so macadamia fuckers claim the best.” Meanwhile, ‘My Story’ and ‘Love Thirst’ – pain and sex anthems respectively – feel earnest where similar songs on previous albums seemed forced. Finally, one of the best MCs in the game has a classic album to match her talent.



This review will appear in The L Magazine.

"The 3rd World" by Immortal Technique

(Viper Records)

The most exciting thing about Immortal Technique is his growled, gargly delivery of pissed off so-far-left-they’re-almost-far-right barrages with a battle-rapper’s bravado and a cyborg’s relentless insistence (best exemplified here on the title track and ‘Parole’). You probably (hopefully) don’t always agree, but it’s rather thrilling that someone’s saying it and making it sound so great. Technique's third effort (produced by DJ Green Lantern) features some so-so songs with lackluster beats and unfocused rhymes (lines about racism, terrorism and capitalism assembled randomly), and well-constructed, coherent arguments connecting local problems and global crises over hard (occasionally excellent) beats.

So on the pretty brilliant ‘Harlem Renaissance,’ Technique connects his neighborhood’s artistic golden age to its present-day gentrification, and to broader problems in municipal politics and globalization. Later, on the booming ‘Reverse Pimpology,’ he dissects music industry branding and pigeonholing: “I’m not a crack rapper/I’m not a backpacker/I’m not a wack rapper moonlighting as a bad actor.” What’s missing here though (what made Revolutionary Vol. 2 amazing) are the few tracks that humanize the outraged and angry cyborg Technique.

A similar version appeared in The L Magazine and can be read here.

"Then What Happened" by J-Live

[BBE Records]

J-Live finally ventured beyond his comfort zone. The Brooklyn MC reveres old school hip hop, but through 2007's Reveal the Secret had stuck to that breezy early-90s jazz-inflected style perfected by De La Soul. That influence hasn’t vanished here – De La frontman Posdanous even appears on the first single “The Upgrade,” which, fittingly, sounds like an upgraded brass-hooked track from Three Feet High and Rising. That aesthetic wouldn’t be so problematic, except J-Live’s delivery develops a detached monotony over repetitive soundscapes – the central flaw of previous releases. Here, however, producers (including DJ Jazzy Jeff and Nicolay) incorporate West Coast gangsta rap (fused onto piping brass on “The Last Third”) and scratched up bass-heavy beats a la DJ Premier (most notably on “We Are!”). J-Live’s lyrics remain clever and verbose as ever – remember, he was an English major and middle school teacher. More engaging beats push his delivery in exciting new directions – as on “The Zone” – while typical tracks like “The Understanding” will satisfy longtime fans. This promising evolution in J-Live’s career raises new questions like, for instance, now what happens?

This review will appear in the June 4 issue of The L Magazine.

"Rising Down" by The Roots

Def Jam

If dissent is “in,” The Roots have their finger on the body politic’s pulse. That said, their tenth album’s intense pessimism has bubbled for years. Just look at literary intertexts referenced in the Philly-based group’s recent album titles. Where The Tipping Point and Game Theory name-dropped concepts for forming consensus and resolving conflicts, Rising Down quotes William T. Vollman’s massive treatise on politically-motivated violence. This album’s a work of incredible synergy, connecting local, national and global crises over urgent beats propelled by mostly percussive and electronic instrumentation.

Black Thought and guests rap with captivating immediacy over ?uestlove’s stripped sounds. The title song features Styles P and Mos Def (spitting his best verse in much too long), while Thought warns of class-determined disaster: “you in trouble if you not an Onassis.” Later on “I Can’t Help It,” he laments having to sell discontent like another product. “I’m feeling like I’m making a sales pitch,” Thought complains, “I got too many options, it’s so many toxins.” We’ve been sold on The Roots for years now, and as their formula sheds toxins every outing, where better to get well-crafted, politicized hip hop?

A similar version of this review appears in the May 14 issue of The L Magazine, and can be read here.

"When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold" by Atmosphere

(Rhymesayers)Over their recent albums (including the outstanding Strictly Leakage, free at rhymesayers.com) Minneapolis duo Atmosphere – producer Ant and MC Slug – have relentlessly re-made their brand of indie hip hop. On the two previous discs Ant has been the duo’s shape-shifter, his production working through contemporary rap staples into a funk-suffused golden era Heavy D-like style. His latest mutation features stripped melodic beats, with a small core of live instruments providing a backdrop for Slug.

The MC is more obviously the focus on When Life Gives You Lemons’ minimalist soundscapes (some tracks feature only one or two instruments), and Slug steps up accordingly. His voice is more musical, his cadence more varied, and his narratives continually subvert the conventions he’s set up over the years. “The Skinny,” for instance, stories a woman’s addiction to cigarettes as if she were an abused sex worker. Indeed, this album marks a shift towards adulthood, where alternating self-deprecation and boasting gave previous efforts the tinge of prolonged late-adolescence that’s all-too commonplace in rap today. So for example, “Yesterday” sounds like a ballad for an alienated friend (think 2Pac’s “I Ain’t Mad Atcha”), but turns out to be about the rapper’s recently-deceased father.

Parenthood is undoubtedly among the album’s main themes. Even more promising, though, is Slug’s feminism, which has been implicit in Atmosphere albums for a while, but now takes center stage. After all, the opener features the line “we made her drown in a lake full of patriarchy,” and roughly half the 15 tracks on When Life Gives You Lemons are about women or feature female protagonists. If this album’s not as immediately gratifying as Atmosphere’s previous work, it’s certainly more rewarding. And, after all, what musical genre needs a talented feminist voice more than hip hop?

A similar version of this review appears in the May 14 issue of The L Magazine, and can be read here.

"The Odd Couple" by Gnarls Barkley

Originally slated to hit stores on April 8, the second album from the uncatagorizable duo Gnarls Barkley came out online on March 18 and gradually became available in stores from that date onwards. An accompanying press release claimed the move was a tactic for pre-empting the distractions of late-March, namely college basketball and the beginning of Spring. More likely, though, the early release came in reaction to significant internet leaking. And with some buzz generated from MTV’s banning of the album’s first video (for “Run”) for fears it could cause epileptic seizures, why not strike while the iron is lukewarm? That video, which has yet to cause any seizures, goes from being a mundane retro club dance number into a visual frenzy that should be seen by fans of video art everywhere. It also features Justin Timberlake as a video jockey-within-the-video.

The album itself suffers from acute sophomore blues. Or perhaps its audience does. Gnarls Barkley’s first album, 2006’s St. Elsewhere, came out in that pre-M.I.A. era when blending dissonant musical genres brought on the kind of giddy excitement reserved for taboo-breakers. Two short years later Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo have put together a very similar album that’s just not as satisfying. Some of The Odd Couple’s problems might come from poor song ordering, which is arguably an antiquated skill in the post-album age. Nonetheless, part of St. Elsewhere’s strength was its attention-hijacking five opening songs. Once listeners were through shaking it to the initial onslaught, the album could mellow out without losing their attention.

The Odd Couple, sadly, starts with a couple of downers, and the first fast-paced pop/rock-laced song ‘Going On’ can’t make up the difference. The Odd Couple is also surprisingly short, with its thirteen tracks totaling less than 40 minutes. At that rate of track turnover, some great songs end before listeners even get into them. That’s the problem with ‘Whatever,’ one of the more successful experiments on the album that lasts just over two minutes. Halfway into the experiment, apparently, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo just said ‘whatever.’ Part of what made St. Elsewhere great was that willingness to experiment, but that spirit of innovation seems to be lost on The Odd Couple.

A similar version of this review appears in the March 26 issue of The L Magazine, and can be read here.

"Eggo Trippin'" by Snoop Dogg

The name, packaging and song titles of Snoop Dogg’s new album Ego Trippin’ suggest a return to the cross-over king’s West Coast gangsta rap origins. However, the 21-track album’s middle song, “Deez Hollywood Nights” – where Snoop raps about partying with Jessicas Alba, Simpson and Biel – portrays this album’s spirit more accurately. Ego Trippin’ is blockbuster rap with enough genre hybrids to please everybody. Except those fans hoping for another Doggystyle, but what fan would want Snoop to grow backwards? That’s regression man.

Among Ego Trippin’s few gangsta rap songs, the best is the southern-styled “Life of da Party,” featuring Too $hort in the album’s only major cameo. “My Medicine,” meanwhile, couldn’t be much further from the blunted marijuana tribute the title implies: it’s a folk-rock Johnny Cash tribute (seriously). Snoop even indulges eighties nostalgia with “Cool,” which is basically a Prince song. This cannibalizing of disparate styles has ruined many adventurous rap albums (Wyclef anyone?). But Snoop’s buttery delivery and Ego Trippin’s prevailing electro-dance production aesthetic keep detours through reggae, rock, Motown, R&B, and even gangsta rap, from seeming too incongruous.

This review appears in the March 19 issue of The L Magazine, and can be read here.

A Diverse Public's Enemy

At the last concert in their 20th year as the group Public Enemy – whose 1987 release Yo Bum Rush the Show was the first in a slew of genre-redefining albums – front men Chuck D and Flava Flav displayed more energy and intensity than lots of rappers one third their age. Averaging 47.5 years between them (Chuck is 47, Flav 48), they ran (and jumped) the stage throughout their two-hour set, the younger in Knicks shorts, black tank-top, black hat and black wristbands, the elder in a neon green polo shirt (then shirtless) with his signature clock pendant swinging from his neck.

On paper at least, the venue (the Warsaw in Greenpoint) was a treat, an intimate counterpoint to their previous night’s show at Manhattan’s Fillmore Auditorium. The culture mash-up of seeing rap pioneers take over a small Polish cultural center was potent, as was having to choose between spending money on a PE shirt or a plate of pierogi. Though the kitchen handled the show just fine, dolling out vast quantities of the Eastern European dumplings all night long, the Warsaw’s sound system wasn’t up to the task. That fine balance of booming bass, crisp drums and a clear enough system to hear the MC’s words clearly just wasn’t happening. Those in the audience who didn’t already know the Public Enemy catalogue by heart probably didn’t pick much up at last night’s show.

That said, it was hard to tell who in the audience knew the group well and who was just along for the ride. In fact, this might have been the most diverse rap show audience ever assembled: eighties, nineties and naughts hip hop fans, recently emigrated Greenpoint hipsters, some Greenpoint Poles, some yuppie Manhattanites, and some totally unclassifiable extras. All these different constituencies created a pretty fun environment, and testifies to Public Enemy’s enduring appeal (and energy). Even if their most recent album, this year’s How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul, won’t have the impact of 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back, this show (and its eclectic audience) testifies to the group’s staying power and the continued relevance of their message.

A similar version of this concert review appears on the New York Press's Information Agent Blog, and can be read here.

Hip Hop Historicism, Live!

The Hip Hop Live Tour – with Rakim, Ghostface Killah and Brother Ali, at the Nokia Theatre last Friday – is a lot like watching three excellent but radically different Westerns from different periods (say, 1956’s The Searchers, The Wild Bunch from 1969, and 2007’s re-make of 3:10 To Yuma ). Like these films and their common genre, the Hip Hop Live Tour featured three outstanding performers doing drastically different things in the same musical style. Like The Searchers with 50s Westerns, Rakim brought hip hop’s classic period to its apex, prepping it for the transition into 90s gangsta rap. Accordingly, his stage presence is organic and doesn’t rely on gimmicks or hype men. As he proclaims in his best boasts – both from classic records with DJ Eric B., and his outstanding late 90s albums – he commands the crowd with an incredible presence and voice. Watching him perform hits from Paid in Full and Follow the Leader to a captivated audience was like being caught in a time warp and thrown back to the late 80s.

Ghostface, on the other hand, took the stage representing the next era: 90s gangsta rap. Like The Wild Bunch in the Western genre, Ghostface comes from that period in hip hop when the violence that was previously downplayed became the focus of lyrical content. His first-hand tales of drug-trafficking and gang violence epitomize the rap style that has reigned for the last 17 years. He regaled the hometown crowd with hits from his prolific solo catalogue and select verses from Wu-Tang songs, while his gigantic posse jumped, ran and danced around the stage, chiming in with the occasional verse to give Ghostface a breather. As much as he brought intensity and energy to the stage, Ghost might also have been out of breath because of the pounds and pounds of bling weighing down on his neck, another 90s trope.

After the model of the hustler-turned-hip-hop-star, Brother Ali represents a return to a more old school style of rapping. Just as 3:10 to Yuma was a re-make of a classic Western with contemporary stylistics, Ali is a classic MC re-made for a generation that’s grown up on gangsta rap. Not surprisingly then, his Friday night set was similar to Rakim’s: just a man on the mic doing his thing with passion and verve.

Criticism leveled against this tour tends to get caught up in biases of taste, not realizing that whatever style of rap one prefers, these three MCs are among the best in their genre. Instead of pitting old school against gangsta and underground rap, Hip Hop Live showcases evolution. That said the choice of a live band as accompaniment, the Rhythm Roots All-Stars, was definitely a mistake. They couldn’t do justice to the complex beats from Ghostface and Ali’s top-notch production, and the ten band-members combined with 10 to 20 posse-members often made for an over-crowded stage. One or several DJs would have been more appropriate to the show’s hip hop historicism, and provided entertainment during the many set changes.

This concert review also appears on the NYPress.com blog, and can be read here.