Slick Rick - The Art Of Storytelling

Most people know Slick Rick for his mid-to-late 80s hits like "La Di Da Di" and "Children's Story." The easy assumption to make is that a 1999 comeback album would be a halfhearted attempt to prolong his former glory, but that is far from the case. The only problem is that too many people made that assumption (or didn't even know it existed) and Rick hasn't put out an album since.Slick Rick's flow evolved a LOT between 1989 and 1999. Where he used to rap in a very fly but also very 80s old-school style, mostly in goofy storytelling form, now (1999) he is a punchline rapper with a cadence unlike anyone else I've heard. He packs his lines with internal rhymes and ends every line with a punchline. He became the type of rapper who almost never spits a syllable that doesn't rhyme with something else, but unlike most who try to do that, he does not sound like he's trying at all. He doesn't spit, he breathes. Sometimes he almost whispers, like he's so fly he doesn't even have to speak up to be heard. Often you get the feeling that Rick is really just humming to himself, except that his humming rhymes. The album is uneven, I'm sorry to say. Some of the less-than-inspired beats and guest appearances make it drag, and it could have used a bit of a trim. But the tracks that hit are among the smoothest slices of hip hop ever offered, and I think it's a shame so few have heard this shit. "Street Talkin'" with Big Boi and "Unify" with Snoop Dogg are good funky singles, but it's the solo tracks like "I Own America" and "Trapped In Me" and the few-and-far-between story tracks that really shine. Yes, Slick Rick still tells stories, and they are still hilarious. He still plays multiple characters right in the middle of his verses, letting their reactions rhyme with his quips effortlessly. "Who Rotten Em" is the story of a young slave to an Egyptian pharoah, who entertains the court with his amazing rhymes. "2 Way Street" is hilarious as Rick continuously almost hooks up with groupies before suddenly remembering he's married, and "Adults Only" is the funniest (and grossest) hip hop ode to anal sex I've ever heard with it's chorus "ain't no way to put it subtle when I want the butthole". For real, for just as much (well-deserved) praise is loaded on the 1980s version of Slick Rick, the nineties version deserves perhaps even more accolades, as one of the most clever, smooth, articulate mc's ever to dip the mic in drawn butter.

Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced

Before I had my own stereo, I saved up my allowance for a Walkman, and for probably a year or so I had only one tape: "Are You Experienced?" In fact it was a dubbed copy of my dad's tape, and the blank tape I used was so much longer than the album that there were over 15 minutes of silence at the end on each side. I probably used twice as many batteries just fast-forwarding so I could start it all over again. I don't know how many times I listened to it. Now, this is a rock album, more so than any other Hendrix album, but to me it will always be a headphone album. The hazes, confusions, depressions, waterfalls, sunsets, itching desires, jacks, clowns, the wind, it all sounds like inner space to me. The emotions touched on are all over the map and they are all raw: whether Hendrix is serenading his waterfall/rainbow, or lamenting that he can't tell the difference between love and confusion, he is always wearing his heart on his sleeve. Obviously this album will always be heralded mostly for Jimi's guitar work, but his singing is just as impressive, in my opinion. He is the greatest singer ever not to be that good of a singer, taking his limited voice to heights of expression that Bob Dylan could only dream of. And he's a poet too; check the laments of the curious alien sampling Earth for the first time on "Third Stone From the Sun", or the ethereal word-painting of "The Wind Cries Mary". And, yes, the guitar is jaw-droppingly awesome throughout. There's not a ton of shredding on "Are You Experienced," but the delayed blips and bloops of "May This Be Love", the reversed pick scrapes of the title track, the dreamy melodies of "Third Stone from the Sun" and the wah-wah/whammy meltdown at the end of "I Don't Live Today" say more with a few notes (they might not even *be* notes) than any other guitarist could say with hundreds. "Are You Experienced" is the greatest rock album ever recorded.

Outkast - Aquemini

"Aquemini" fills the air like the smoke from a fat charcoal grill, causing everything to shimmer behind it with heat. At this point Outkast (and Organized Noize) had the budget for some seriously overblown productions, but before they went the way of galactic space-funk with "Stankonia," they had a barbecue and got down. The instrumentation on here drips with deep dark soul sauce, from the organs and horns of "Return of the G" to the strummed guitars and harmonicas and foot-stomping of "Rosa Parks" to the ethereal percussion and slow-cooking poetry of "Aquemini", to the horn-section melancholy of "Spottieottiedopalicious," and the psychedelic guitar work on "Chonkyfire". The background singing is always beautiful and soulful, like on the feed-the-baby anthem "Slump," the melancholy "Return of the G," and the sublime "Art of Storytelling" which is probably Outkast's greatest song ever, matching Big Boi's parking lot pimping with Andre's tearjerking reminiscence on Sasha Thumper. Big Boi and Andre are both in fine form, spitting forever-quotable lines. The laid-back, never in a hurry production fits their flows perfectly, with Big Boi's fifty-million-syllables-in-a-bar stop and start style never sounding rushed or off-beat, and Andre able to spread his wings and throw (for example) thousands of monosyllable rhymes into one non-stop verse on the title track: "My mind warps and bends, floats the wind, count to ten, meet the twin, Andre Ben, welcome to the lion's den, original skin many men comprehend, I extend myself so you go out and tell a friend, sin all depends on what you believing in, faith is what you make it, that's the hardest shit since MC Ren, Alien can blend right on in with your kin, look again cause I swear I spot one every now and then, It's happenin' again wish I could tell you when, Andre this is Andre, ya'll just gon' have to make amends". Big Daddy Kane got nothin' on this. Anyone deprived enough to still have no Outkast in their collection, start here.

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Apocalypse

The differences are obvious between this and other (earlier) Mahavishnu albums: Jan Hammer and Billy Cobham are gone, Jean-Luc Ponty has arrived, George Martin (the fifth Beatle) produces, and it features the freakin' London Symphony Orchestra! Two orchestras at once, eh? Well it opens up pretty symphonically and traditionally until you realize the lead violin (Ponty) is playing through a wah-wah pedal. Then the band comes in and before you know it John McLaughlin is doing what he does best: shredding his natural ass off. It gets from point A to point B so smoothly I didn't even notice the transition from delicate finger-picked nylon strings to white-hot electric licks, but it happened somewhere. Then the funk kicks in. The album is good from start to finish, not their best album by any means (and I REALLY miss cobham and Hammer) but it's still interesting throughout. There's even an operatic song with vocals by the new female keyboard player! And having a full orchestra really amps up the epicness of the Mahavishnu sound, with grand gestures and microfunk rhythms alike being nailed by the string section. I think I even heard a choir passage or two, but I might have been tripping again.

Faith No More - Angel Dust

I first heard Faith No More on the hit "Epic," which sounded to me like a harder-rock, slightly evil Red Hot Chili Peppers song. I got "Angel Dust" as soon as the opportunity struck, even though "Epic" is from an earlier album. This is one of my favorite hard-rock albums. It blends heavy-metal guitars with funk bass, creepy lyrics and a lot of choruses that are as weird as they are catchy. Mike Patton's singing, as always, goes everywhere from deep metal growls to syrupy lounge leering, and this is probably the most listenable of all his projects, with the creepiness lurking somewhere in the background instead of bashing you over the head. I know that calling anything "the most listenable Mike Patton project" isn't really saying much, but trust me. "Midlife Crisis" is especially amazing, and its breakdown contains the same (at least I think) sample as the opening of the Beastie Boys' "Car Thief," a fabulous falling rhythmic sweep. "Be Aggressive" is weird as hell, with "I swallow, I swallow" repeated over and over again and a bunch of boy scouts spelling out the chorus like it's a flag-raising chant.

Anticon - Anticon Giga Single

Is this the same group? They must have gone home and did their homework or something. The production is tighter and less murky, the song structures have started to exist, some of the mc's have decided to throw rhymes in every once in awhile, and in general it sounds a lot more coherent and thought-out than the worst-titled album ever, "Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop." I think the biggest difference is that Anticon found their niche here. They're not really hip hop, they're more of poets with music. So get rid of Slug, someone said, and replace him with more poets! So they found a way to take lyric poetry and release it on CD. And the way to do that, lo and behold, is to structure it like songs. Sole and Dose One, two of the most annoying mc's ever on that other album, do a dual/duel rapping workout on "A.D.D.", and it actually sounds sorta good! Sage Francis, who actually is a hip hop artist, appears on this album and his beats and rhymes are lightyears beyond anything I expected to find when I popped it in. I'm still not big on Buck 65, whose "Pen Thief" sounds like whatever the take before the first take is called, and I could also do without the annoying "Postmodern Pat Boones" or the inane skit that follows, but overall this is an improvement to a degree I would never have thought possible.

Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Vibrations

Funny how the 70s turned some jazzcats into suave funkateers. The Roy Ayers Ubiquity was a group formed expressly for this purpose when it comes to vibes-man Roy Ayers, and woe unto those purists who avoided it like the plague, because this shit is excellent. Smooth vibes, intensive grooves, quasi-falsetto singing, catchy start-and-stop choruses, I lidove it. My only regret is the Ubiquity is not more Ubiquitous in my collection.

Laurie Anderson - Big Science

The cover of this album looks like some sort of new-wave synth pop, and though there are some shades of that, this is a lot darker and weirder. Often it's just a kooky drumbeat with maybe a little bit of background atmospherics, while Laurie Anderson performs spoken-word poetry that ranges from mundane to disturbing. I don't listen to it a lot but there are bits that are cool. Overall there is definitely a sense that something is missing, and a little research showed me that something indeed is missing: apparently this "album" is in fact a partial soundtrack to a several-hours-long performance art piece.

Anticon - Music For The Advancement of Hip Hop

"Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop"? Really? With a title that pretentious it had better be the dopest shit ever heard. It starts off promising (if not revolutionarily) with Slug (who I never knew was involved with these guys) throwing back to Rakim's seven mc's and then dropping a pretty tight verse. Unfortunately it's downhill from there. Lofty song titles like "Martyr Theme Song", "Human Races the Tortoise" and "Untitled" can't save the fact that everything done here has been done long before, and with a lot more power and soul, by Ultramagnetic MC's, Organized Konfusion, Divine Styler, Wu-Tang, and plenty of others. Most of the rappers' styles are somewhere between rhythmless and annoying, with a few actually managing to climb both those peaks at once. Dose One obviously thinks he's the most original person to ever "rock the mic", with his wavery delivery and pseudo-English accent whenever he says something "deep", but he's really just the biggest Rammelzee rip-off to ever suck. Sole is inaudible, Buck 65 can't decide if he wants to be Kool Keith or Mykah 9, and the production and subject matter throughout sound like some kid read three paragraphs of Eastern philosophy during a bad trip and decided that rhythm is stupid and they should make a rap group to prove it. There are two good mc's on this album, Eyedea and Slug, neither of whom show up often enough to make a difference, and both of whom later went on to much bigger and better things. Slug is a borderline great mc, one who knows his history, makes throwbacks where appropriate, and, in a breath of fresh air for this album, actually seems to realize he's rapping over a beat. His "Nothing But Sunshine" is by far the best track on the album, and if you haven't heard it you should give it a listen.There is one area in which this album really does make a break from the rest of the hip hop world: a complete lack of hip hop slang and urban imagery. I've got nothing against that, but if taking the roots out of hip hop, ignoring its past and pretending to represent its future, is what passes for "advancement", I'll pass. Supposedly this crew cut their hip hop teeth on battles. Who were they battling, Emily Dickinson's corpse?

Caribou - Andorra

I kept accidentally thinking I was listening to the Mamas and the Papas. The sunstained dream melodies on "Andorra" are so similar to 60's flower power songs that you almost feel transported. Except the instrumentation is clearly from the new millenium, with crystal-clear production and bubbly synths flying around in the background. I can't really get into the indie-rock rhythm section that demands bass and guitar be played by metronomes instead of musicians, but the drums and singing come close to saving it for me. For my money though I'd rather drop the needle on "Nuggets".

Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath

Get a Flux-equipped Delorean, set your time circuits to somewhere around 1991, and hit up the wee hours of a smallish rave. Before you go in, smoke half a J and put on some earmuffs. That's pretty much what this EP sounds like. The song structures and rhythms are not too far from what rave techno sounds like, but the timbres are parsecs away from cliche. Where others use synthesized Korg pianos for their rhythm tracks, Aphex Twin uses softened drippy synths. Instead of breakbeats and 909s he uses custom synth drums that twist like burnt cans. It's not essential Aphex, especially if you're more into his late-90s rhythmic insanity, but it's worth a listen.

Q-Tip - Amplified

When this album came out, it got pretty much nothing but bad press. The word was that the Abstract had gone pop and it just didn't work. I was naive enough to go on this word and not even get the album to give it a chance. I eventually picked it up about 6 years later in a used bin somewhere. This album has aged a lot better than you might expect. It doesn't sound anything like the popular hip hop of the time, nor does it sound like Quest minus Phife. If anything the closest thing to it in sound is The Love Movement, but the production on Amplified is a lot sparer.Q-Tip does very little message rapping on this, very little narrative, etc. and those of us like myself who are used to his verses being perfect examples of easily-memorizable, impeccable simplicity, will find a different Q-Tip here. In part I would think that being freed from the reins of Tribe allowed him to just stretch out and have fun; at the same time, the cover art and his fur coat, bare-chest look suggest that the label was pressuring him to dumb down his sound and vision. The middle of the album is strongest, from the sing-song "Let's Ride" and "Things U Do" to the crunchy "Go Hard," the Moroder-y "Go Hard"and the *almost* anthemic "Do It." What it comes down to is that this is a good Q-Tip album. It's only a disappointment when you compare it to the huge shelf of classics that have his name on them. The album does a sonic and conceptual U-Turn with the last track, "End of Time." After 11 tracks of having a great time and enjoying life, all of a sudden we're on the brink of apocalypse. Not too convincing. Then there's a not-too-hidden bonus track where Tip raps his autobiography, which is by far the most honest and heartfelt track on the album. All in all, I have to say that if this were a debut album by an unknown artist, it would have been lost in the sands of time. This is the only project Q-Tip has ever been involved in that is not essential.