I’ve talked-up the beats of Baltimore’s DJ Excel a bunch of times now (for sampling Stoner Metal,for making the Baltimore Club equivalent of Tortoise’s “DJ’ed”,for making the beat for E-Major’s “Don’t Worry”), and now there’s his collaboration with Port Huron, Michigan’s The Lyricists:
“Although Bmore Original released the Lyricists’ full-length L3 last year, Transmittin’ Live is the Port Huron, Mich., underground act’s first musical collaboration with DJ Excel. Excel’s blueprint is the boom-bap you expect from a crew called the Lyricists, but one of Baltimore’s most ubiquitous beat makers grabs some of club music’s energy and avant production for the EP, too.
The titular track bumps like ’90s New York, as metallic sci-fi sounds pulse and near-subliminal snippets–part Dilla Donuts style, part clipped Baltimore club vocal–of a blues singer tumble in the background. And it’s all brought back to earth by worker-bee rhymes from Illtone and Rym-Benda, and pragmatic scratches from in-house DJ, Haus Diesel.
More than comfortable spitting hard-ass battle raps, the Lyricists’ real success comes in knowing the right time to rein it in and chill-out. On “The Juggle,” Illtone matches Excel’s woozy strings by ungritting his teeth, and dropping the commanding boom. It makes a song about regret (“stress shows in the form of gray stubble”) palpable.
“Bubble Guts” employs their storytelling and simile spouting talents toward nothing more than a hilarious song about, well, taking a shit. The Lyricists trade lines back and forth (“Yo, my palms are sweaty from grippin’ handicap rails/ Droppin’ logs the size of white whales”) and DJ Haus Diesel punctuates the scat-rap with turntablism mimicking the sound of a diarrhea burst.
With Excel subtly stretching the boom-bap rap form to its limits, the Lyricists actively eschew the grotesque cliches of stubborn traditionalist hip-hop. In the past, the group has done some “rap sucks now” kvetching but, here, they trade it in for self-effacing humor and weary tales of maturation (hometown lament “P.H, MI.” and “Grown Up”).”
For new or in-limbo artists, a solid, easy to digest product that would sell for a few bucks cheaper and still doesn’t curtail the necessary “debut album” seems like a better option. As Jay Electronica’s shown, not really playing the “mixtapes, rap on others’ beats” game can work better than being another guy with a ton of mixtapes going buck over “A Milli”. Jay’s earliest hype came from his Style Wars EP, which at 12 songs, all of them originals, could’ve been called an “album” or at least, a “mixtape”.
SHADY records-signed Bobby Creekwater released an EP on his MySpace last year called The BC Era and listening to it was both invigorating (it’s nine solid, guest-less tracks of rapping) and depressing (because if Bobby ever drops an album it’ll have crossover beats and guests and run closer to 18 tracks). Bobby Creek’s always impressed me more than most languishing in label limbo rappers, but BC Era shows he can make a solid collection of songs without hiding behind the “mixtape” label.
B.O.M.B released his EP Testers in the spring and like BC Era, gives you a group of great songs and some palpable sense of scope. Demon synths and trebly horns squeak out from the titular intro track through the next nine songs, with brief detours for the rolling pop-rap of “Lean” or club-ready jams mixed with a Ghostface/Dolemite storytelling detail on “She’s Nasty” and it all lets-up for the perfect closer “Sunday”, a decidedly relaxed celebration of his hometown. Imagine the average rapper’s grabs for versatility, smooshed into nine cohesive tracks, not stretched to twenty.
MANIA Music Group’s Midas and Kane Mayfield each released super-solid, thematically cohesive EPs for free on their website. Midas’ Live from the Arcade, based around the propulsive, video-game themed “Push Start” is a quick portrait of a rapper that straddles the line of nerdy thoughtful sometimes wounded rapper (“Blue Lights” “You’re Fired”), and guy ready to kick your ass (“Brass Knuckles”) and call you a cunt (“Set’em Straight Skit”). It’s a concept and sincere gimmick that dude can easily stretch into a proper full-length when the times comes and part of that confidences comes from his comfort in not taking seventy minutes to prove it. On the Prelude to Bladerunner EP, Kane’s almost always ready to kick your ass and call you a cunt, but he wraps it all around a dystopian aesthetic of garbage can drums and future electronics.
Although record sales show I’m kinda maybe alone on this, when I hear something perfect like The BC Era or Live from the Arcade, I want to own it. And I’m more apt to pay 10 dollars for something that’s really hot than 15 dollars for something that’s part hot and part boner-kill. Additionally, the EP is marketable as an LP which most rap records—almost always 2xLPs– are not. While the market’s not exactly huge, the “vinyl resurgence” has been documented in quite a few places lately and I like to walk around pretending that rap heads in particular, still care about vinyl outside of their Serato.
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