No Trivia

(photo by Frank Hamilton)

This year, I was fortunate enough to be involved in the the Baltimore City Paper’s “Best Of Baltimore” issue, which mostly meant hanging out with dudes who write for the paper and watching them hash out a lot of this and then offering my two sense on a couple of categories where I sorta kinda have some authority. So mainly, the club music categories in Arts & Entertainment, but please check out the whole issue.

The work of usually exuberant Baltimore rapper Dappa Dan Midas has lately taken an ugly, existential turn. Though the former battle rapper’s always displayed a mean streak—perhaps best seen in his recent tussle with A-Class—Midas’ M.O is usually playful humor mixed with unmatchable intensity. Joyful, pummeling tracks like “Push Start” off his Live From the Arcade EP and his role in Mania Music Group—as the equally furious but far less serious foil to Kane Mayfield, Ron G., and Milly July—show a rapper with a deep understanding of craft and the rare ability to entertain. Midas might sport a mohawk and rock an outfit that’s one part Urban Outfitters and one part Plato’s Closet thrift finds, but he’d absolutely murder any track handed over to him. In a city of rappers still dredging up references to The Wire for street credibility, Midas stands out for choosing skill and enthusiasm over mean-mugging…

OJ Da Juiceman’s hiding inside of this song, I think. Listen close to those squeaking, oscillating high-pitched sounds that start talking to the Eno-esque pulses 38 seconds in: those are the pitched-shifted “Aye!” ad libs of young Juiceman…I think. Specifically, it sounds like Pierre has grabbed some pieces of Da Yo Boyz’s “I’m Da Shit”–wherein Murder Mark sampled the Gucci track of the same name and then covered it in a haze of OJ Da Juiceman “aye!”s and “okay!”s—and incorporated it into his much more chill, Art Of Noise-esque club track. As “Can U Feel It” unravels, the manipulted “aye”s grow closer to sounding like a human voice, giving this askew dance track that very important feeling of progression.

Notice how “Can U Feel It?” lacks most of the basic, decades-old elements of Baltimore Club (no quirky/raunchy samples, no “Think” or “Sing Sing,” it’s not all that aggressive) and instead, wanders around in its own strange sonic space. I like to tell people that club music isn’t a subgenre, it’s a genre and though that sounds really good but only kinda makes sense, the point is club’s pretty much mutating into something unrecognizable to older ears and that’s awesome (it’s even more awesome because somehow these tracks still work next to the classics in mixes). DJ Pierre is at the forefront of this still figuring itself out mutation.

Also check out Pierre’s latest track “Where Da Hornz At,” which at first, teases itself as a “Samir’s Theme” derivation and then waddles into far murkier territory.

*you can also read this post on Tumblr now, golly!

Mike-Mike – “Bmore Better Be Afraid”

Word to Metal Lungies for linking the Z.O.M.E song from the other day. Here’s Mike-Mike of Z.O.M.E putting some new rhymes over top Eminem’s “Not Afraid” and making something far more inspiring and exciting than the original. Namely, Mike-Mike leaves Eminem’s signature self-loathing behind (dude doesn’t sound like anybody owes him anything) and maintains a level-head, even when he’s in battle mode: “He say, he’s the best/Well, I feel the same!” That’s a pretty unimpeachable response to “best rapper alive” boasts, you know? Every rapper thinks they’re the best, so let’s just keep it moving or prove that shit! That kind of propriety is also what allows Mike-Mike to really go after Baltimore’s rather calcified rap scene and come off more like a frustrated fan, than a guy just stirring up beef: “Majority of Bmore sounds like the south yo/And everyone down south know!/So quit it./We’re stealing the south’s flow/Even the niggas ain’t got money, rap about dough.” Rapping-wise, Mike-Mike’s attuned to every production trick and beat change-up in Boi1Da’s instrumental (hints of ST of G-Side’s masterful “Over” freestyle), strolling along with those soap opera pianos at the beginning of verse three (“I have been chillin’ for a minute”) and taking advantage of those moments where he can toss out some confident chuckle or stretch his voice out and get weird with his raps.

Also–you missed the dude’s birthday:

*you can also read this post on Tumblr now, golly!

Z.O.M.E, “I’m Ready” (produced by Murder Mark)

“We got too much swag./That word is kinda overused so no–we can’t say that…” Some rather elegant, strangely elaborate, swag/not-swag rap from Baltimore club producer Murder Mark and his Z.O.M.E (Zoo On Mars Entertainment) crew, K.S, Mike-Mike, and Rell. Though Z.O.M.E’s music aims for the “Pretty Boy Swag”, hyper-minimalism taking over rap’s youth scene(s) right now, Murder Mark production here is pure headphone music. A wobbling synthesizer jumps into the mix for Mike-Mike’s hook and then slips away, replaced by those kinda classy keys once it’s time for rapping again. The space between the purposefully plodding beat gets filled with vaporous electronics and on the outro, Murder Mark even employs that underwater-sounding trick that sneaks into everything dance-ready from unimpeachable Detroit techno classics to the music video version of “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” Mike-Mike is the real highlight here though, as he’s both a spirited club vocalist and the most interesting rapper. Talking shit and halfway laughing through his verse and just generally bringing something unhinged to the song’s hook.

*you can also read this post on Tumblr now, golly!

Reviewed Baltimore rapper UllNevaNo’s mixtape, The Color Brown where he raps over beats from Kev Brown. He did the same thing with Evidence beats for last year’s The Color Purple, but this project’s better all around and feels like a really solid rap release in the key of underground hip-hop, but with enough rough edges and strange asides to make it really stand-out. You can download it for free over at Under Sound Music’s website.

Most rappers on the come-up do just about anything to create the illusion of an industry co-sign. They’ll stick a verse in the middle of a radio hit and hype it up as a “remix.” They’ll sample a popular rapper for a hook and when they blast it out to the blogs, credit the song as “featuring” that popular rapper. So, when Baltimore-based, San Bernardino-bred rapper UllNevaNo tells listeners that he has “no relationship with [D.C. beatmaker] Kev Brown,” on a mixtape consisting entirely of raps over Kev Brown’s instrumentals, it’s a sobering dose of sincerity–and precisely the kind of cagey honesty that permeates much of The Color Brown.

UllNevaNo exhibits the expected verbal dexterity (the mission statement-like “Bright Sound,” the concentrated lyrical exercise “Serious To None”) but he offers up something a bit more rarefied and unpredictable too. He can be playful (the “riding the Metro sucks” rap-rant “Tune Em’ Out,” the old school pro wrestling references in his rhymes) and at times, disarmingly emotional. Coming right after the contemplative “Reconsider It,” there’s the relationship rap, “Someday,” a tangle of diary-like confessions (“I don’t even know what to say/I wrote this verse and thought about you today”) and nerdy, needy pontificating (“There’s too much technology, not to stay in contact,” he tells his ex from five years ago). When UllNevaNo wonders aloud if the girl still has the mix CD he made for her all those years ago, and a depressed guitar sample rises out of Kev Brown’s foggy beat, punctuating the sentiment, it’s one of the most touching, bittersweet moments in rap this year…

Here’s my review of Lower Dens’ Twin-Hand Movement, which is a really confusing, great album that’s really hard to write about, so I just took the detached, “try to explain” it route but there’s a ton of stuff I’m missing. And that’s always the case with reviews of any length but especially here. I actually think both of these pieces (“Blue and Silver” track review, Twin-Hand Movement review) by City Paper’s Michael Byrne kinda wrestle with it better than I, but still, there’s something missing there too, so you should probably just listen to the record yourself.

In an indie rock climate currently consumed by schticky eclecticism, Baltimore’s Lower Dens stand out for confidently and provocatively mining entry-level indie influences: the deliberate chug of the Velvet Underground, Cat Power in her noisy naïf phase, Joy Division’s disco-punk in a dungeon style. But Jana Hunter and her band don’t simply regurgitate underground rock classics; they approach these intermediate sounds from odd angles.

Two damaged, garage-rock instrumentals (“Holy Water” and “Completely Golden”) sandwich “I Get Nervous,” a confused, touching, almost love song (“Baby, I get nervous/Just being in your service”). “Rosie” noodles around for more than a minute before bass and drums enter the mix and once they do, Hunter’s hesitant vocals frantically climb through the group’s hazy, mass of sound. “Plastic and Powder” is a dubby, No-Wave-tinged composition stretched to its breaking point, building up, then simmering down to Fripp & Eno-like globs of ambient noise. It’s a beautiful moment on an otherwise nervous and jittery album…

So yeah, more off-site content…but I was really happy to get to rant about the new Mullyman album somewhere other than this blog anyways, because Harder Than Baltimore really deserves some praise. It might be my rap album of the year–at least the best thing since Starlito’s Renaissance Gangster–and I think I touched on Mully’s weirder qualities, which are pretty much always overlooked.

Also, Harder Than Baltimore really functions as a kind of meta-commentary on the major label rap album–something I don’t mention in the review because I’m tired of rap reviews that just straw-man the industry/scene to big-up one rapper–as it’s basically all over the place, but never compromised. The dance songs are Baltimore Club-informed (and produced by DJ Booman no less), so they aren’t cheap dance tracks, they’re talking to a dance genre that’s as hard as hip-hop.

Both the title track and the last track, “Deal Or No Deal”, do that thing where you steal a really famous rapper’s voice for your hook, but here, they’re almost commentaries on those rappers. If Jay-Z can brag he “go[es] harder than Baltimore” on a song, well Mullyman’s from the city, you know? If Drake, a former child actor with apparent industry connections is going to fucking brag “Everybody got a deal, I did it without one”, well Mully can actually say that–he started Major League Unlimited right when majors were courting him. The song’s a quiet affront to big-shot self-loathing, self-mythologizers like Aubrey. Mostly though, this is just a really brave, fun, and impeccably put-together album.

Mullyman is a hard-assed, occasionally sensitive rhyme obsessive, who shines on street tracks but possesses the rarefied talent to make pop and dance raps that are just as sharp. Like Baltimore’s version of T.I., he’s versatile but consistent, and keeps his content relatively simple—mostly bragging and stories of growing up in Baltimore—while exhibiting a wider and weirder frame of reference than is really necessary…

-”Can’t Stop the Pro”: An Interview with DJ Excel

Way back in March, I sat down with DJ Excel with a bunch of cigarettes and Starbucks and just started talking, mainly bugging him about his career as a beatmaker and Baltimore Club producer from the start, which for him kicked-off with a chance meeting in a mental institution in eighth grade. My main attempt as to fill in the holes in Excel’s career and explain why there was a gap between his first Club record from 1995 and his return to the scene almost a decade later. Excel sent the interview back to me recently, accompanied by a beat–like dude remixed my interview–and so, the talking starts around the two minute point. I’d advise even those readers that don’t know much about Excel to stream or download this podcast/interview thingy because I think you’ll get something out of it…unless a really great producer’s twisty-turny life story told with a whole bunch of candor and honesty doesn’t matter to you.

Where most wizened, hard-ass rap albums end–with the song or two that drops the tough talk and allows the inward paranoia and depression to bleed through–is where Kneel Knaris’ eighteen-track trip through bipolar disorder, Going Sane In a Crazy World begins.

On the intro, “Prologue (Act I)”, Kneel’s hearty eloquence confesses A.A-style affirmations like “the person I fear the most is me” atop some medical soap opera piano twinkles but eventually, a fractured, waddling beat lets the flood of disclosures and revelations rush through and wash the relative tact away. “I fear God but the Devil’s taking over” Kneel announces, like he’s jumped from his seat at the weekly meeting and then adds, “Thoughts of suicide are better than staying sober”. This track’s a kind of throat-clearing (and maybe room-clearing) announcement as to what kind of album Going Sane is: one-note, dark, serious, confessional.

-”Never Gonna Make It”

But Knaris doesn’t forget this is a rap album and so he spits suicidal couplets with the passion of a Scarface or Killer Mike, not the lethargic mumbles of recent sad-sack hip-hop (Kanye or Kid Cudi). “Never Gonna Make It”, the album’s first proper song, is essentially a “diss track” only Kneel’s going at himself with the fervor usually assigned to an opponent in a cipher: “You ain’t never been paid to do a show/You ain’t never seen more than ten spins on the radio/You ain’t never sell more than twenty albums/All you ever do is hit the bar with Gerard, Troy, and Malcom/Sad sack of shit…”

This sense of flipping expectations or finding some new way to do some old shit is a staple in most really good rap, but Knaris pushes it even further, using the it’s one thing, then it’s another and it’s both, plurality of rap to reflect Going Sane’s bipolar conceit. Save for a few songs where Knaris does approach a depressed mumble (especially the palpable “Monologue Act III”), he’s usually spitting his laundry list of worries, concerns, and psychosis with a gleeful passion, which is unexpected but makes total sense for an album trying to approximate the feelings of bipolar disorder. The album’s two recurring symbols are Guinness (a depressant) and Starbucks (a stimulant)–also featured on the album art, standing tall over a knocked-over bottle of pills–and it’s a brilliant, but down-to-earth simplification of the album’s themes.

-”Silver Lining”

Starting with “Intervention”, where Kneel rejects the advice of a therapist (voiced by E Major), and all the way to the half-victorious “Silver Lining”, Going Sane bungees from depressed nihilism (“Dear Lord”, “1000 MG Act IV”, “I Don’t Wanna Feel”) to moments of kinda clarity (“No Apologies”, the title track). “Silver Lining” is especially affecting because it’s basically the type of song that should end the album–there’s hints of understanding, regret, and change in there–but it would be too perfect of an ending and there’s a kind of dark joke when Going Sane keeps going past that “moment of clarity” track.

There’s a discomforting, but smart refusal to wrap it all up cleanly, despite the brilliant overlapping of images and symbols, and the final two tracks that do in effect, summarize the album (personally on “Something To Talk About”, clinically on “Epilogue (Act V)”), there’s a great deal of loose ends on Going Sane, giving it a sense of continued life and past-the-running-time struggle, beyond just frantic soul beats and quivering raps from Knaris.

And this is the weird paradox of Going Sane: It’s a remarkably together piece of art about how Kneel Knaris doesn’t have his life together. One thing the Geto Boys or say, Beanie Sigel got away with is not making cohesive albums because the strains of self-destruction and depression in the music are so real it makes sense they can’t get their shit together for an entire album. Going Sane’s cohesion and narrative thrust’s a testament to Kneel’s relative escape or acceptance of his disorder. That he got it together enough to sculpt a concept album that never gets too concept album and grabs on for dear life to the ugly, all-too-real details of bipolar disorder and depression, is where the hope lies.

‘Going Sane in a Crazy World’ is currently available digitally on iTunes and Amazon. It’s currently selling for $7.99 at Amazon…