(1st round match-up 9 of 27)
This particular trio of this particular convoluted and
entirely unnecessary project was a pleasure, as I’ve loved upon all the main
artists involved in this threesome, yet had never fully explored any of these
albums. Musically speaking, this turned out to be the best threesome of albums
I’ve forced myself to partake of as part of this idiotic mess thus far, which
was a welcome psychic palette cleanser after that 808s and Heartbreak bullshit
from the last threesome. Sadly, I doubt such aural joys will continue…
DJ Quik & Kurupt – Blaqkout
(released June 9, 2009; #25 on 2009 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)
I have always felt DJ Quik has been underrated as important
and ground-breaking beathead within hip hop. Shit man, imo he’s got as much a
fingerprint on G-funk sound as Dre did, and while Dre has morphed into Very
Important Businessman status, Quik has remained true to music always. I had
never once listened to this album before, not even a song, mostly because I
guess I didn’t really care about Kurupt ever. But holy fuck man, instrumentally
speaking, this album is amazing. Not sure I’ve had too many occasions in recent
years where I’ve thought to myself, “Got to peep this up close on the
headphones to really dig into the beautiful chaos” but Quik caused that. His
arrangement of sounds and mix of live instrumentation with samples both
familiar and unfamiliar is just unparalleled. Like I’m willing to lobby for
MacArthur genius grant for Quik to be honest. I think his brilliance gets lost
because the lyrical content of a lot of his work is not as academically
intelligent, even in our 21st Century “every stupid fucking thing on earth is
culture” cultural studies level of academia. This album is no different, as
there’s plenty of odes to pussy and getting fucked up and not giving a fuck at
all.
But even with less than most highest lyrical content, Quik
has always had a sort of contrarian delivery that followed its own rhythm,
almost off-beat at times but more likely just skipping around over
stereotypical flows beat path, which is something I don’t think a non-producer
MC could do, and maybe not even a producer MC with a lesser musical knowledge
than Quik. And even though Kurupt doesn’t stand out in anyway as an MC to make
me mark the fuck out for him on this album, he does play the role of necessary
complement which gives the vocal part of it all more depth than it would have
were it Quik-alone. It’s the EPMD principle, which follows that of your normal two-man
sports commentary crew of live events – you have the play-by-play guy who is
very methodical and keeps from being too outlandish, which would be Parrish of
EPMD or Kurupt on this. And then you have the color guy who gets out there a
little bit, takes the conversation away from the predictable, or just says shit
in weird ways, which was Erick Sermon, and Quik on this. It makes a seemingly
boring and predictable event – like talking about a basketball game, or a hip
hop album – less boring and predictable, if done right.
Blaqkout is done right. And musically, this is some Stanley
Clarke’s Journey to Love era fusion of multiple musical philosophies into some
near-spiritual (musically-speaking) Sunday afternoon chilling the fuck out
music.
FOUR STARS!
Mos Def – The Ecstatic
(released June 9, 2009; #40 on 2009 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)
Cover of this album is a still from Killer of Sheep, a 1970s
indy film by Charles Burnett, which is one of the most amazing movies ever, and
most people don’t even know exists. I actually finally got to see Moonlight
this past weekend (which I had wanted to see in theaters but never got a
chance, despite only wanting to see movies in actual theaters about once every
five years, maybe more), and I thought Moonlight was as great as I had expected
it to be, but also strangely enough it reminded me of Killer of Sheep a lot in
how it so deeply humanized moments that often get lost in the grandiose purpose
and editing of traditional film-making.
All of that is brief opening aside to Mos Def’s album, which
is stepping toward world music pretty heavily from his Rawkus beginnings, and
ultimately it was while in support of this album he made his first trip to
South Africa, which is where he ended up staying (longer than legal) and
realizing himself as Yasiin Bey. I love the old Black Star stuff immensely, as
well as Bey’s earlier works, and I have as well become somewhat inspired and
informed by Islamic teachings in the past decade of my life. Not sure why I
never peeped this album more deeply, as it’s been collecting digital dust in my
itunes all along, but it’s a great album, shockingly cohesive considering you
can hear the disparate producer influences on it. (Man, I’m about sick of
Neptunes beats during this period of time by now. Like sure, they did some
great shit – I will rock “Superthug” instro 8-hours straight if necessary; but
damn so many Neptunes beats sound manufactured and over-produced and so
obviously Neptunes it gets annoying.) Luckily, the heaviest hand on production
was Madlib’s, and if you’re gonna go on a world exploration album about life
beyond the arbitrary border of the U.S. empire, there’s not a better audio
guide than Madlib.
Adding to the cohesion is the lack of feature syndrome most
albums suffer from. The ones that are here all make perfect sense too. It’s a
solid, cohesive in theme album, and to be honest – knowing Bey’s real life
situations since this was released 8 years ago, my biggest gripe is that we
haven’t heard about any further philosophical exploration by Bey in full-length
form since. I mean maybe the world doesn’t care, or maybe the spirit of it got
sucked out of him while signed up with Kanye’s group. (I have a hard time
reconciling Islamic-converted world-viewing Yasiin Bey with Kanye West, but
hey, the world makes for strange bedfellows, always, as nothing is ever as
black-and-white as we make it in our minds.)
When it comes to world music, there are two types (from
American Empire consumption point, or downloading online with ease) – the Putamayo
route, or the Rough Guide route. Putamayo is like starter-world music for the neoliberal
set. This is what you hear in coffee shops. Rough Guide is a more obscure brand
(though not as obscure as actually digging into the source music itself – I guess
the old showing and proving do the knowledge technique of going to the source
will always apply) and tends to offer more depth of inputs. This Mos Def world
view expanding album’s got that Rough Guide feel to it, more than a Putamayo
trending infatuation to be replaced by holiday music just as quickly. Thus I’d
really like to know where he’s at now, since he’s had another half a decade to
explore these spaces.
FOUR STARS!
Raekwon – Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II
(released September 8, 2009; #5 on 2009 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)
Honestly had never listened to this album, as the joke of “Cuban
Linx II coming soon” had become so prominent I think I forgot to pay attention
when the joke was ruined by an actual album. And honestly, I had never expected
it to be as good as it is, especially after just listening to that 8 Diagrams
Wu abomination. In fact, I’d say Cuban Linx II is actually everything about a
Wu reunion album that I was disappointed about in that 8 Diagrams piece. Anyone
who sounded uninspired on the Wu proper does not sound that way here. Everybody
sounds at least invested in doing a fucking song. And Rae and Ghost remain the
two who seem dedicated to spiritual origins of Wu more than commercial appeal.
In terms of Wu orthodoxy, this is definitely a fundamentalist record, but
without being dogmatic about it. And after being exposed to so much Wu shit
from 2007 beyond (Pitchfork seems to love all things Wu, which is not exactly
out of the ordinary for a white-ish internet-as-fuck endeavor; I mean look at
me), it’s starting to seem like the best way to get off a solid
Wu-fundamentalist project is to limit how much control RZA has over it, which
also goes entirely against what early Wu-fundamentalism would have suggested.
The obvious schism between Rae/Ghost arm and RZA has been well-documented in
media, but is even more obvious on cultural value of the actual albums, imo.
And with “gentrification of the internet” being partial
foundation to this stupid fucking Pitchfork project, I feel at unease even
mentioning something like “Wu-fundamentalism” because now it will exist, and
when things like that exist inside the digital realm and are exposed to the
sterilized fermentation process of internet, ugly things are born. So I
apologize.
FOUR STARS!
THE WINNER: After first time through all three of these
albums, there was no delineation between them in my mind (or heart, as I am
judging from heart not mind, at least in theory, which again is from heart, but
now we’re just looping endlessly between two sources of knowledge inside man),
so second time through I had to really hone in on what might separate one from
the other two. This was difficult, as all three were great enough to justify
advancing, considering some of the other crap that’s already won a trio contest
in this HH3os crap. But ultimately it came down to this heart thinking:
A) The Ecstatic musically did not make me want to get high
and put on headphones five nights straight like Blaqkout did. B) Lyrically,
Blaqkout got kinda stupid at times, at least stupid enough I couldn’t justify
it over Cuban Linx II. Thus Cuban Linx II won out in a spirited contest which
hopefully suggests that contrary to primitive boom Baptist beliefs, hip hop is
not dead. (Hip hop is never dead, though it may become more and more zombiefied
or animated by artificial intelligence. Art never dies; it just gets
homogenized into profitable waste of artistic space.)
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