New Singles Review - 9/29

So this week's new singles start off with one from Bruno Mars featuring Damien Marley. This joint has me searching the house for a blank cd I'm feeling it so much. I love the feel of the song, the way their voices blend with the track and the song lyrics itself. This is just an all around good track and I'm liking what I hear from Bruno. I present to you "Liquor Store Blues"



Now onto a track

We gotta do better folks...

So looking at the latest videos on the death of hip-hop.com aka worldstar I've seen some disturbing trends. First let me address this 'hip-hop tranny' or so it's called for a reason. There is no reason to believe that the rappers are gay because they are in pictures with this transexual person.



You know this tranny as it may be, is just like any other broad to these artists who are at the club

Legitimate Raw

(Youtube version is here.

...And that link I mention is here.)

...And One

...One and One returned in 1997 with their second single, "My Soul" on Next Plateau.  It's another quality cut with an essence that's pure, vintage 90's.  It's a little slower, more of a smooth song than the rugged, energetic "Phenomenon," which for me makes it less compelling.  But I suppose your mileage will vary there, depending on your personal tastes - if you're the type that's always seeking out those Midnight Marauders/ The Roots-type cuts, this may be more up your alley.  But, whichever side of that fence you fall on, it's still a quality, respectable song.  They flip another great sample ("Tell Me This Is a Dream" by The Delfonics), which has been jacked by a couple other artists since, but it sounds great here.

And unlike their previous single, this one makes with the remixes.  First up is the Soul Mix, which isn't bad either.  It's got some heavy bass notes and a cool, mellow vibe.  The downside is that it all sounds a little too studio-crafted... which is to say that the music all sounds like it was programmed and created with studio equipment, as opposed to rich samples (or live instrumentation, of course).  So, it's okay... sort of like the 12" single version of album filler, but for the most part, you're going to want to stick with the original.

That's followed up by The Boogie Mix, which embellishes the R&B... all the versions have a little uncredited singing on the hook; but on this mix, she croons constantly in the background, it's more pronounced on the hook.  The music is more traditionally "R&B"ish, too, with sparse piano notes and another soft keyboard loop.  The whole venture just has more of an early Video Soul groove.

Flip it over and you've got Instrumentals for the Album and Soul Mixes; and, better still, you get a B-side song called ""Didn't I."  This is a pretty cool and harder track.  It's built around another Delfonics tune, this time (obviously) "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)."  They even have a girl singing a variation of their chorus for the hook.  It's not quite as good as there other two songs, but still nice.  Unfortunately, even though the label says "Album Version," this is clearly a censored Radio Edit with reversed curses.  And this song features a lot of cursing, so it really sucks that this is the only way to hear it.

Unfortunately, this was the last One and One record; they never released a full-length, which is a big disappointment.  Interestingly, though, they did reunite in 2002 to contribute a couple of tracks to the rather odd-ball Legends of Hip-Hop compilation, released by Absolut vodka, which I reviewed this time last year.

I wonder if there's an unreleased One and One album in somebody's vaults, somewhere.  The fact that Next Plateau had them for over a year (one single in '96, another in '97) and the fact that they released a Clean Version without a Dirty Version both suggest that one probably was recorded, or was at least underway.  Something seriously needs to be done about all this great hip-hop music being locked away in vaults; it's downright criminal how much the people are missing out on!

One...

Doctor Ice has had a couple of cool careers in hip-hop: dancer for Whodini, member of UTFO, and successful solo artist signed to Jive (and later Ichiban).  But I don't think many people realize that he invented himself another time in the 90's and had another successful little hip-hop career during the "lyrical," underground, grimy  backpacker-type era.  Well, okay, maybe not successful as in huge record industry bucks.  But successful as in quality records that real heads ought to appreciate.

"Yo, kid.  let me tell you something about this business.  It's a fucked up business, you know what I'm saying?  I gotta teach you a whole lotta shit before you see what this shit is like.  It ain't nothing but some dirt, kid.  'Cause if your shit ain't phenomenal, you ain't in there.  So your shit must be phat."

That's the intro to "Phenomenon," the 1996 single by One and One on Next Plateau Records.  And One and One is Doctor Ice and his cousin, recording under the aliases Sunny Bumz and Harry Balz.  lol  I know, but try to get past the names.  See, you'd never know Doc Ice or anybody old school was remotely affiliated with this project if you didn't know going in - this is a pure 90's release, along the lines of like Black Maddness or Ill Bizkits.  It's all about rugged but clever wordplay spit over a slow boom-bap beat with seriously hard drums and under-stated samples.  Seriously, the beat's really tight.  In fact, DJ Premier later lifted it for his single "Equality" with Afu Ra; but One and One, who co-produced the track themselves with some guy(s) called Swing of Things, had it first, by about four years.   In fact, I'll go one step further and say it sounds better here.

So, Harry takes the first two verses: 

"Study long, study wrong,
You know lessons get learned in minutes.
Keep my diction - full of non-fiction,
I hate gimmicks,
executives' views on the rules
Of the game,
I'm using sense to make dollars
Real scholars bring change."

...And at first it seems like Doc's just gonna spit the hook in support of his younger cousin's street flow, but then he comes in with a sick final verse.  He comes so hard, again, you'd never thing it was an old school UTFO cat unless you recognized the voice. At the end, he even breaks into a little Brooklyn-style ragamuffin (which is actually something he's done on a few past projects).  Don't even think of it as a Doc Ice-related project, just another cool, completely overlooked "random rap" release.  Then, the fact that there's an old school legend on here is just like a little bonus.

This single just features the one mix of the one song, but it comes in the four requisite versions: Album, Radio, Instrumental and Acapella.  The one drawback is that the Acapella is actually of the Radio version, not the album version, so the curses are censored.  What's the point of that?

This is a really nice release, and like I said, it's pretty slept-on, so something you should be able to score pretty cheap.  Pretty cool, right?  But maybe now you're wondering if this is their only release, or if there's more.  Well...

MC Shan Vs. Duke Ellington

"It Don't Mean a Thing" was the lead single off of MC Shan's oft - and understandably - maligned 1990 album, Play It Again, Shan.  That album, after all, featured the split from Marley and The Juice Crew, house songs, Shan singing(!) with some very cheesy computer manipulation to his voice, love songs, a duet with his wife and kid, and even a song by a girl group that Shan wasn't even featured on!  So, it's a bit of a mess*.  It was also his most heavily promoted and probably budgeted album - probably (though admittedly, now I'm just speculating) because he took every awful executive suggestion from the label and let them have their way at every turn.  But for all its myriad faults, it's an upbeat, enjoyable mess that at least has its moments.  And for me, "It Don't Mean a Thing" is one of them.

"It Don't Mean a Thing" is a pretty undisguised rap version of the old jazz standard "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" by Duke Ellington.  "IDMaTIFAGTS" (how's that for an abbreviation?) wouldn't be such a long-lasting standard if it wasn't a pretty catchy tune, so it's a reliable musical back-drop for Shan, who self-produced this song, and the rest of the album, along with co-producer John Ficarrotta.  So it's got a nice groove with some funky go-go percussion - a curious, but successful, combination.  And Carole Davis, who had her own album out on Warner Bros. at that time, sings a nice hook.  The horns do admittedly sound like they were played on a synthesizer keyboard, and Shan's lyrics are just your typical, unexceptional dance song lyrics ("As you can see, my rhymes are swingin' it, and when the punchline comes start singin' it").  Maybe I'm just too forgiving of the old school, but I get a lot of enjoyment from this song; and the lavish, jazz-era music video released at the time sure didn't hurt.

The 12" comes with two versions, LP Version and Fade.  The only difference between the two is that the Fade mix fades out twenty seconds earlier than the LP Version.  The longer version has a few more repeats of the hook, and Shan shouts, "pump it up!" at one point, but that's about it.  As you can see, it comes in a cool picture cover depicting Shan with four hands, and it's also b/w one of the better album tracks, "I Ran the Game."  The narrative-style lyrics are a bit corny but amusing, and the music's dope and the hook is a simple but fresh vocal sample.

So it's a cool, if pop and kid-friendly single, but the contents of the 12" are a bit underwhelming.  The only thing not on the album is a version that cuts off the last twenty seconds - who the Hell wanted those Fade versions Cold Chillin' used to do, anyway?  A DJ who wanted to fade the song out 20 seconds earlier could do that on his own easily enough, or he had no business DJing.  Oh well, regardless, it feels a bit like you're being short-changed on this one.  They couldn't throw in a remix, an exclusive B-side or at least an instrumental?

That's where this promo 12" comes in.  The "It Don't Mean a Thing (Remix)."  It's the same production team of Shan and Ficarrotta, but the music is completely different.  Shan's vocals and Carole's hook are the same, but all the music is completely different.  The drums are less go-go-ish, and all the chintzy horns and stuff are gone.  Instead you've got some subtle scratching, deep bass notes, some nice jazzy samples, a tuba loop, horn stabs, and an occasional piano riff.  If that sounds like a lot of elements, it is... the song as a whole sounds a bit too busy at times, and they would have been better off ditching the sung hook and just letting the scratching speak for itself at those points.  But it's definitely more straight-up hip-hop, and certainly a better sound than most of Shan's other stuff from this era.

Casual listeners will either just want to stick with the album version or pass on this song completely, but more serious aficionados who can listen to this with a more analytical ear will probably find it at least worthwhile.  It just doesn't quite work because the music doesn't really fit these vocals.  Or maybe more to the point, it's that the vocals just don't really make sense if they're not paired with a version of Ellington's music.  In other words... wait for it...  it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.  :P

*The LP was a bit less of a mess than the CD and cassette versions, however, as it left off five of the songs: "Ain't It Good To You," "Rock Stuff," "Clap Your Hands," "Mic Line," and "How I Feel About You."

Finally, A Real Nerdcore Movie

Okay, now you might remember a time last year when I reviewed what I thought was going to be a look at hip-hop's odd-ball sub-genre, nerdcore, only to be pretty disappointed that it turned out to be essentially a tour film for one particular artist. Well after that, I became somewhat determined to see an actual, at least semi-comprehensive nerdcore documentary... and this is it. It's called Nerdcore for Life - a 2008 flick, but just released on DVD a few weeks back. And I am finally, after almost a year, satisfied.

TL;DR? It's a good movie.

I don't know how much actual nerdcore music I could vouch for, but the film? It's an enjoyable, informative and breezy experience. I say "breezy," because we don't get too close to anyone in this film. We don't follow any of the artists to their home lives, meet the people who knew them growing up or walk in on any powerful personal moments. Instead it takes a more comprehensive approach, covering pretty much all the major artists, events and issues that make up the genre. In that sense, it's a lot like the music: packed full of fun, obscure references rather than delving into potentially affecting poetry.

This film covers how the genre formed, who the key players are, how and where it developed... it looks at key events, websites, articles, performances, even message board beefs. This is a film that knows what it's talking about and has a lot to share. Of course, how much you'll want to see this film - unless you're feeling particularly adventuresome like me - will depend on how interested you are in this nerdcore stuff. A lot of the MCs are clearly getting by based on the novelty value of their subject matter rather than any actual MCing skills or quality music. And it can get a little frustrating listening to these (sometimes self-proclaimed) hip-hop outsiders patting themselves on the back for starting something that hip-hop has already been doing since pretty much day 1. They seem pretty impressed, for example, by an early nerdcore artist who they say blew their minds by doing a rap song about Star Wars... but hey, what about the multiple tracks by guys like Phoenix Orion, Walkmen or Shamroc the Abstract Jedi who easily predate nerdcore? Of course, "Star Wars rap" is just one piece of it; but the point is, new ground isn't really being blazed anywhere here... I don't think any of these people have topped the nerdiness of Newcleus; and they're definitely not as funky. But you'd never know that if you only took these guys' word for it.

To be fair, the film does briefly address that: they mention early novelty rap songs and point out how "DJ Jazzy Jeff rapped[sic] about a lot of nerdy stuff." But that's what I mean: the movie gets it right even when the artists themselves don't. So, if you can get past the cheesy beats and sometimes pretty awful MCing (I mean, it's not all completely terrible... let's just say that the levels of talent and quality vary a lot, and none of it reaches "great"), there's a lot to take out of this movie. It was neat to actually see the real man behind MC Hawking, surprising to come across Jesse Dangerously, an artist who I remember the 90's who I never knew was now a part of the nerdcore scene. There's a great bit where some of the MCs explain some of their more obscure references, and a shocking bit of back-story to YTCracker, who apparently did time in a federal prison for hacking into multiple government and military websites.

The DVD has some extras, too. You get extended footage of several performances and convention coverage that only as quick snippets in the documentary. You get a short but interesting look at a screening (of this film) and performance in Amsterdam, followed by some uncomfortable after partying. And finally you get music videos for "Buggin' Out" by MC Router and "Lolcats" by Doctor Popular.

So yeah, if you're even remotely interested in anything to do with nerdcore music, I recommend checking this movie out. It's a fun time, though you might want to just rent it or catch it when you can, since it doesn't have the emotional substance to draw you back in again and again like, say, Gates of Heaven or something. And if you're a hardcore fan of this stuff, definitely go ahead and purchase the DVD (which you can do direct from their site, nerdcoreforlife.com); you'll be pleased. Ah, who am I kidding? I'm sure those guys had this on preorder since 2009. ;)