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Brooklyn rapper Mos Def was already a hero of New York's hip hop
underground when he joined Talib Kweli on the Black Star album in
1998. His solo Black on Both Sides (Rawkus) is a living,
breathing commercial for the articulate understatement favored by young
insurgents for whom hip hop is subculture first and pop culture
later or never. No hoochie choruses, no hooks vying for air time,
just flowing beats intertwined with simple melodies--the subtle
double keyboards of Umi Says, say, seguing into the plashing
xylophone surrogate of New World Water. Mos Def is one of those
rappers who spills out philosophy as easily as someone discussing
the ball scores at the water cooler--lots of words, sometimes
drama, but rarely much showing off because he's too confident to
need it. As the title indicates, he's a race man. As you can't know
without listening, he's smart and loving and convincing about it--that is,
eminently worth a listen.
On Ad Finite, their inaurural U.S. release and first album for
Tricky's Durban Poison label, the long-running English techno duo
Genaside II spare no sonic expense in updating Gil Scott-Heron's
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which is where their trip
begins. From fake strings and real opera singers to big beats and
rough dancehall shouters, they make their soundscape all that it
can be. Two simpler techno records succeed in almost the opposite
way, by achieving one simple goal. On Aphrodite (Gee Street/V2)
it's jungle beats closer to the funk root than is now the fashion,
nowhere more explicitly than on the hard-rapped Woman That Rolls.
Slick Sixty's Nibs and Nabs (Mute) goes for a more sophisticated
groove--lounge r&b in the age of the sampler.
Playboy, Nov. 1999
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Oct. 1999 |
Dec. 1999 |
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