Consumer Guide Album

Yohimbe Brothers: Front End Lifter [Ropeadope, 2002]
Wailing and wah-wahing and noisemaking atop a usually bass-enhanced pulse (Doug Wimbish is a close personal friend), Vernon Reid's avant-gardisms prove a wilder and more inventive foil to DJ Logic's grooves and samples than Casey Benjamin's modal funk saxophone, which symbolizes jazz all over Logic's own Anomaly. The Yohimbes' groove never falls beneath the standard of good drum'n'bass/trip-hop/whatchamacallit, and often rises well above it. Nigerian club icon Wunmi takes over one track. On another, Slick Rick and Greg Tate trade raps even up. A-