Link: http://www.discobiscuits.com/

Here in their fifteenth year of activity, The Disco Biscuits continue to load up ubiquitous genres in the trunk with their fifth studio album Planet Anthem. Once holding deep roots in the soils of jammy incongruity, this collection flutters high in the sky with breezes of melody and intelligent song craft. Featuring plenty of East Coast hip hop vibe, Planet Anthem is a rambunctious busybody; the fruits of which spawned from collaborations in the recently purchased Philadelphia studio space once owned by DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Appointing big name producers and other outside hands, such as Don Cheegro and Dirty Harry and Roc-A-Fella’s co-founder Damon Dash, maintains the fatty sheen of gaudy production. How appropriate, however.

Electro hop “On Time” is on deck for the pop charts with the lead vocal track sheathed in dripping Auto-Tune and one of the most toothsome breakdowns you will hear. “You and I” sounds 3OH!3-approved with pandemic hooks and teasing drum breaks. Arabian nuances add refreshing mystique to the otherworldly trance of “Über Glue”. Tracks “The City” and opener “Loose Change” can be heard influenced by countless white-boy underground hip hop records of the past decade and a half.

Verse for verse, “Fish Out of Water” is as close to indie rock as they get; however, the chorus falls back upon something that could of come from the Fun Lovin’ Criminals canon—minus the politics, of course.

The Disco Biscuits run the gamut from synth-rock to electronica to alternative hip hop. So wildly all over the place, it’s amazing how everything gels together. While lyrically nothing to write home about, Planet Anthem is still replete with convivial, radio-friendly pop songs.

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.

Links:

Original Dan on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/rolldeep1
Eskibeat Recordings on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/eskibeatrecordings

Flow Dan, born Mark Viera, returns with a solo project, Original Dan. Hailing from London, England, the sounds spilling out of the release are anything but the expected London sound. Jungle, DubStep, and Grime beats and rasta-hip hop lyrics fill out the majority of the LP. The album is full, frenetic, and varied, but all sticks together well. Electronic  samples, blip noises, sound effects, auto tuned vocals and triple-tracked voices are the fleshy appendages on this DubStep skeleton, and the occasional super-deep bass tracks help to balance the creature out.

For a good representation of the album, check out “Show Theme, “Dumpers,” Stage Show,” and “Run”. These fun, strong tracks are the best on the release.

Much of the album is the expected topic of hip hop lyrics- explaining how tough he is, how “street” he is, and about how talented he is. Unfortunately for hip hop fans (of most every sub-genre of hip hop), this is par for the course- instead of demonstrating the talents an artist has, they tell the audience how talented they are. It too often seems like more advertising than substance.

Being hypersensitive to racial politics, one track, titled “Kack Back” caught my ear in a negative way. Repeating a  chorus of “…when black men are talking, you better keep on walking,”  I was unimpressed to say the least.  I could see how I could be wrong about his intended message, but this strays too close to negative politics. I really could have done without the track.

RIYL: Miami-Bass music, DubStep

Origin: New York City
Style: Hip Hop/Punk

The summer of 1992 was a period of transition. High school was becoming a distant memory, I was adjusting to university life, and the world was on a fast track away from the ideology of decadence to the practicality of non-practicality wrapped in flannel. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Northwest scene was exploding. Bands like Sonic Youth and Fugazi were adapting in their own way.

The Hip Hop kids were also changing. Disappearing from the limelight were Public Enemy and Run DMC, while new kids like Cypress Hill and Snoop Doggy Dogg were taking their place on top. It would not be long before a band like Rage Against The Machine would rebel against being told what to do. But as times changed, the Beastie Boys always seemed comfortable in a constant state of evolvement, as well as involvement.

Even though nothing could top the scope of Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head was a welcomed change in their career, especially one coming from a punk background and those that knew what their early New York days were like (Pollywog Stew).

Growing up alongside the Beastie Boys, it felt like they were growing up right along with you. With this album, the members pick back up their instruments and dive deeper into pop culture without sacrificing a lick of talent.

Unlike any of their other albums, Check Your Head gives us an aural history of a time in New York City when Bronx Hip Hop was fresh, and you could see punk rockers and b-boys hanging out side by side. Gone was the drinking and partying persona that shined like a metallic beer can on License To Ill. Gone was the recreational drug references on Paul’s Boutique. All of that paved the way for a more sobering release and the drive to get back to the basics of pure musicianship. When their friend Dave Scilken died in 1991 of a drug overdose, it shocked the band and gave them a wake-up call that made the three closer and stronger than ever.

Even at the release of this album Paul’s Boutique hadn’t completely sunk in to pop culture’s subconscious as “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” was still invading airwaves and various nightclubs. As with Paul’s Boutique and even more so with Check Your Head, change was imminent, and it appeared that the band did not care if the public kept up. And as most people had no clue of their punk past by being stuck in a License To Ill trapping, it was a refreshing surprise to hear the elements of Funk, Soul, Punk, and Hip Hop all come together.

Check Your Head did something to me no other album did. It made me want to explore beyond my immediate musical boundaries of Punk, Alternative, and Hip Hop culture. Continuing on this album, there is a maze of musical references that make the sampling as much a guessing game as it was trying to determine what Glenn Danzig was actually saying on a Misfits song. Sampling for this band was a homage to their influences. Fab Five Freddy, Ohio Players, Jimmie Walker, Kool and the Gang, Jimmie Smith — all were powerful forces that further accentuated the band’s roots. The way they incorporated them into the songs only breathed new life into the how obscure and not-so-obscure their taste was. It brought soul back to the white kid, it provided a hip hop history lesson, and it allowed people to accept Bob Dylan alongside Bad Brains or Ted Nugent with Venom.

Much like listening to The Clash’ London Calling and their immigration of reggae into white culture, Check Your Head was truly about change in a way that no other album could provide at the time.  Looking back, it was equally as much about a reaction from the album as it was the music.

Opening up new avenues in sound, it also opened up my vinyl collection, searching out new styles of music and trying to understand them. A trip to the record store would not be about rounding out a Black Flag collection, or picking up Minutemen albums or looking for some obscure Euro-alternative band, it was about checking out what Miles Davis was doing to jazz in the ‘70s or learning who The Jazz Messengers were, as well as getting your hands on a Lonnie Smith release or The Meters. It was exploring the rebels and diving into the essence of music history.

Instrumentals like “Groove Holmes” and “Pow” put things into perspective that explored the gritty essence of funk and soul that could be traced back to the black exploitation influence on film culture. The band has a light-hearted spirit when it comes to lyrics that almost border on absurd, but the deeper you look into it, the real meaning of their purpose becomes clear like when they blast into a punk frenzy of “Time For Livin’” and the pre- “Sabatoge” chart topper “Gratitude.”

New York hardcore had dissipated by 1992.  Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law, Disco Biscuits – gone. So for the Beastie Boys to come out with these kinds of songs was a flip of the coin. The influenced became the influential.

I always felt that the album should have started with “The Blue Nun” as “Stand Together” is a more pungent statement about the album than “Jimmy James,” an overall feel-good song that only demonstrates the Beastie Boys are back and ready to show off on the mic, which is what “Pass The Mic” was all about, a better stand-out song than “Gratitude.” However, even “Pass The Mic” has its fault with Mike D making the mistake of rhyming the word “commercial” with, wait for it … “commercial.”

To round all of this up, fans of the band also got to experience their aura through their Grand Royal magazine, which helped in understanding where the band came from, and what they were musically thinking at the time as they wrote about people like Lee “Scratch” Perry or looked at things like graffiti culture. The band simply made the itch of finding impossible urban artifacts in suburban culture easier to find.

And more importantly, the Beastie Boys demonstrated that their fight was now heading toward a more positive direction, as further experienced in Ill Communication.

Check Your Head was not as bold as that of Paul’s Boutique, but it was a celebration of music and Hip Hop integration. At this point, the Beastie Boys could officially do anything they wanted.

Cross-Reference: Bad Brains, Afrika Bambaataa, Lonnie Smith

Origin: New York City
Style: Hip Hop

When James Brown recorded songs like “I’m Real” and the uber-pop patriotic “Livin’ In America,” the icon of super-soul sex machine shrunk down to a Top 40 garbage disposal. “Livin’ In America” bodes about as much instant gratification as Matthew Broderick lip syncing to The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” on a parade float in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off while Chicagoans quickly transformed into a massive dance troupe and turned the Magnificent Mile into a choreographed reality. It was that point when James Brown and Eddie Murphy became synonymous and the sweat was no longer true grit.

And just like Afrika Bambaataa’s Dark Matter, this collection of songs is not, in essence, Bambaataa. The “Godfather of Soul” did not know how to quit. And with Bambaataa’s resurfacing, the “Godfather of Hip Hop” is falling into the same trap.

I’m not sure if this was as much a comeback as it was a reactionary response to the state of Hip Hop in 2004, which was a mixture of party anthems and explicatory ghettoisms, or if it was just a last ditch attempt at keeping his head out of the water. With Hyrdraulic Funk being released in 2000 (no relation to P Funk’s album of the same title), it seemed like the ‘90s wore a hole in Bambaataa’s career, as the Hip Hop School of Positivity (A Tribe Called Quest, Arrested Development, De La Soul) was coming to an end. The Godfather of Hip Hop was becoming like his inspiration. Unfortunately for Bambaataa, none of these songs ever broke out, except maybe “Metal,” a song that turns Gary Numan into the modern day Bing Crosby/Bowie as Bambaataa sings around Numan’s song. It’s a scene all too familiar, going back to transforming Kraftwerk into “Planet Rock.” The second time is not charm.

It’s a shame. “Got That Vibe” is a great opener for the band, shooting samples of electrical currents through the air waves that brings everyone together the Bambaataa way – positive universalism. But how many times can you say “Throw your ass on the floor” before it falls flat.

After that, the album switches from P Funk-style anthems to electro beats that try its hardest to mix feel-good breakbeats with anti-gang and drug messages. How effective it is may depend on the devout follower versus casual observer. If “Planet Rock” did not capture someone to be a fan, Dark Matter will not. When Bambaataa collaborated with the electronic group Leftfield to make “Afrika Shocks,” it’s not surprising that songs like “Soul Makossa” sounds the way it does, and veers completely away from the sound that Afrika Bambaataa practically invented.

And by the end, it seems like the band just gives up and let’s the DJ take over, defeating the message of a song like “No Dope Fiends On The Floor.”

Put your hands in tha aieeeeaairrrre! Yeah, we get the picture. Someone needs to tell them that party ended years ago.

Cross-Reference: James Brown, George Clinton, Leftfield

Origin: Queens, New York
Style: Pop Rap, Party Rap

For Young MC, real name Marvin Young, it paid to go to school. A student at the University of Southern California, where he received a degree in Economics, music was a hobby until he met two guys that ended up changing his life, Michael Ross and Matt Dike, co-founders of Delicious Vinyl.

When exactly Marvin Young transformed into Young MC is unknown, — his earliest debut came in 1988 with “I Let ‘Em Know” — but thanks to a fascination with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, as early as 11-years-old, Young began writing and rapping nursery rhymes, in which he later expressed interest in recording a children’s album from these early writings. (Rolling Stone, Issue 572, February 22, 1990, p. 33.) If you want to know about Young in his own words, you don’t have to travel far. The song “My Name Is Young” builds rhymes like an autobiography, “They told me time will tell, and it has told ‘cause I’ve been rockin’ the microphone since I was 10 years old.”

As his life fell into place,Young quickly understood what smash hits were made of by collaborating with Tone Loc on writing “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina,” a boost to Tone Loc’s career that put him in the Top 20 artists of 1989. It was a year after that when Young created his own place in chart-topping history and saw him on shows from Arsenio Hall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stU_2fBlSsI) and Dionne and Friends (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZoj5hv3WaA) to an unusual appearance with Faith No More and a live collaboration on “Epic” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Ys3HGFE40).

In a simultaneous dimension, 1989 also saw The Beastie Boys record their highest regarded release, Paul’s Boutique with The Dust Brothers. Young was able to nab The Brothers along with Mario Caldata, Jr. to assist in the production of Stone Cold Rhymin’. It cannot be denied the essential effect of these people on the album and how the sound was created to be accessible by a universal audience. This was not Ice T making The Iceberg and talking about the realities of South Central or NWA and their extremist Straight Outta Compton. Young was public with his anti-drug and alcohol stance but he also knew how to incorporate his straight-laced ethics into simple party anthems and stylized rapping. From his videos to his live appearance, Young always dressed well, conservative for rap standards, and was out of place in the lineup of late ‘80s rap stars.

Although disregarded in the discarded one-hit wonder category, Stone Cold Rhymin’ had all the ingredients for the rap album of the decade and succeeded in 1991, beating out Public Enemy with a Grammy, a first of its kind.

This is not an album to show off how tough he is like he tries to with “Roll With The Punches,” this is an album that shows how intelligent he is, escaping anything political or socially conflicting, except for the Nancy Reagan-esque “Just Say No,” which came a little too late from the heyday of the government-sponsored anti-drug campaign. Young MC sticks specifically with poetics and touts his ability with songs like “I Come Off” and “Fastest Rhymes,” proving his eloquence in enunciation at a rapid pace. Young’s goal is simple, to appeal to a broad audience and give them something to relate to (Bolofo T. and Anderson T., “American Collections. Rolling Stone, September 6, 1990, Issue 586.).

You cannot talk about this album without at least one mention of “Bust A Move,” the song that put Young MC on the road to legend and, at the time, kept him on the charts for 39 weeks. As Run DMC nabbed Aerosmith to record a Hip Hop/Rock version of “Walk This Way” and Anthrax befriended Public Enemy, Young took a more eclectic approach to the cross pollenating of styles by hiring bassist Flea to create the infamous bass line on the song, as well as Stevie Wonder’s recording backup singer Crystal Black to give the song an added element and strengthened melody to its foundation. His lyrics also play like an adult nursery rhyme that plays more like an article in Details Magazine on how to pick up women.

“Principal’s Office,” a second hit for Young, didn’t hurt either, showing a more method-paced storytelling that bears more resemblance to DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. For a slower tempo’d song, it’s a fair selection for Young to breakthrough with. “Know How” seems like a better choice with its Shaft theme song sampling and the quick licks Young spits out.

Thanks to these songs and the Grammy, NBC tried to capitalize on the rap and rock crossover and aired a half hour special starring Young MC called “Rock The House,” which featured a mix of rap and rock and roll in a high-energy nightclub setting (New York Times, May 13, 1990, p. 31).

Overall, there is no dismissing Young’s talent as a lyricist. His expressive vocals and quick tongue make words slide and transition flawlessly.

Young will never experience success at this level again as he felt the need to change and become more social and political in his works. Pop rap also didn’t have a chance, fading into rap antiquity by the mid-’90s.

Stone Cold Rhymin’ is trapped in time as the effects of this album did nothing to influence the path of Hip Hop through the later part of the ‘90s. But it is still a valid release and one of the more important albums of the style that still can liven up a party or shake up the dance floor. And one thing that Young can feel proud of is that Stone Cold Rhymin’ never became a parody upon itself like his pop rap contemporaries Vanilla Ice or MC Hammer.

Cross-Reference: Tone Loc, Lucas, LL Cool J