ZapTown

The J. Davis Trio
These Things Happen
Yo Yo Smuggler Records
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Link: http://www.myspace.com/thejdavistrio

The Hip Hop world has had their fair share of blingy tripped-out jazz with smooth operators spinning words into a weave of commentary that is equally swank in style and often poised in context.

However, The J. Davis Trio’s third attempt just does not cut the cake when it comes to integrating the two ideals. Listen to one song from These Things Happen and you may disagree.

Take “Breezay,” for example. At first, you hear the bouncy beats and the swooning of a stand-up bass. Bongos may accentuate the head-bobbing, and instrumentally you have the feeling that something is going on. But then you get to the lyrics rhyming and when they say “we going to do it like this,” you are not sure what “this” is as you spend most of the album scrambling around to figure out what they are really trying to grab at.

And what you may agree on is that the album as a whole demonstrates a tired redundancy to their songs. They may do well at making a song like “Breezay,” but that is all they are good at making. Everything on Everything Happens lies on a linear plane and maintains the same tempo and song construction.

The excessive explicitness and the over-abuse of shouting out to their nigga really distracts from not just the message they present (whatever that is), but also the combination of smoothness and an otherwise accomplished lyricist.

A lack of diversity and potty-mouthed rappers trying to build prestige the wrong way, it’s the live musicians who really save this album from being an absolute mess, but it’s not enough to pull this band from the confusing muck of style and substance.

The band needs to take some lessons from others like Automato or A Tribe Called Quest and work on the polish.

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