Little Derek/ The Star

“Little Derek”

(from the album, This is My Demo, self-released, 2005)

“Little Derek” is an extremely heartfelt, simple proclamation of Sway’s place in the world circa 2005. It also serves as a great analogy to the struggle of UK rap to be viewed as more than a curiosity but rather a genuine contribution to hip hop. In fact, in many ways the best rappers of the decade have come from the UK where a more honest and candid form of rapping has combined with a wider palate of beats to reinvigorate hip hop (at least to those who listen to it). Sway, unlike Dizzee Rascal or Wiley, has failed to gain very much recognition in the last five years outside of the UK which only serves to highlight the genius of his laid-back delivery on Little Derek. While the bird call sound he uses to end nearly every line may at first seem gimmicky, it is precisely why I love this song. Check out how subtle the variation of this sound’s inflection is from line to line (especially in the chorus).

Lyrically, Sway is simultaneously boasting about his minor success (the entire chorus), while fairly candidly discussing the perils of his past (“We did what we had to done to get BY, hoping not to get caught up in some silly drive-BY”) and the challenges of being an up-and-coming rapper (“When you do UK rap, you’re number TWO, cause the US ain’t giving us space to break Through, so I’m on my grind trying to pioneer a breakTHROUGH”). Sway, on this track as well as many others on This Is My Demo, managed to get a lot out of the old rap tropes of urban decay and self-promotion purely because of an interesting voice and good taste in beats. This precise combination has been approached recently, albeit with a pretty different aesthetic, by DC’s Wale, another unsigned (at least at the time of “The Star”) rapper from an underrepresented city with an ear for interesting beats, deft wordplay, and a never-ending zeal for self and hometown.

(from The Mixtape About Nothing, self-released, 2008)

Where “Little Derek” is a nonchalant, effortless jam, The Star is anything but relaxed. Over the course of nearly six minutes (and two different beats at completely different tempos) Wale delivers the manifesto of the kind-of-underground, but kind-of-wants-to-be-Jay-Z rapper that is so ubiquitous these days. Rather than riding a beat, Wale pushes himself the entire length of this track to inform, entertain, and mostly impress with his ability to give us more than just a peak into who he actually is. There really does not seem to be that much of a difference between Wale’s persona and the guy behind the rapper. Even a line like, “I’m a S-T-A-R, the one that A and R salivate for”, feels like a triumphant reminder addressed to himself that he is actually finding success after “grindin’ for 9 years”.  Maybe the all-over-the-place references, jokes, and emotional and social tones of the entire Mixtape About Nothing make Wale’s bid for mainstream success with recent single “Chillin” and his upcoming Attention: Deficit album sound like a stifling medium for one of the roundest characters to emerge in hip hop this decade.

While Sway has managed to stake out a place for himself in the UK just outside the mainstream, it will be interesting to see which direction Wale goes. Will Attention: Deficit be the hit album it’s anticipated to be or will Wale be able to continue to push himself and further explore the multi-dimensional Wale of his mixtapes and not of his stale Lady Gaga collaboration?

T.O.J.

(from Fantastic Damage, Definitive Jux, 2002)

“The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,  That ever I was born to set it right!”

El-P’s Fantastic Damage is a masterpiece in many ways. It’s where El-P perfected the “Def Jux sound” of futuristic soundscapes, jagged beats, and highly dense rapping but also where he expanded what could be done in the often confining genre of hip hop. Late decade triumphs by other experimentally-inclined “rappers” Dalek, Subtle, and others seem to flow from the fearlessness of Fantastic Damage. While most of the album takes many listens to unravel the ambitious narratives and truly innovative beats, “T.O.J.”  drops the harsh exterior and is a pivotal, emotional climax of this record.

The title “T.O.J.”  is a reference to Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint, one of his lesser acclaimed early-period novels. While Dick focuses on a man trapped in a government-sponsored hallucination, unaware of his central role in an ambiguous form of post-modern warfare, El-P turns to the story of a man baffled at a love that has slipped away, presumably via a time-warp of some sort. This track is self-reflective in a way that most hip hop artists are not even willing to attempt. It’s amazing that the guy who penned the line “I’d rather be mouth-fucked by Nazis, unconscious” on “Deep Space 9mm” could reveal such a vulnerable sentiment as:

Everything you said:  I took it all to heart
And you spurred a change in me
Before I could become a new sun I had to fall apart
And I can see that now
And I wish you well
Cause you saw what was good in me
And I’ll be god damned if I didn’t see that myself

Even more than just great lyrical wordplay and self-exploration, “T.O.J.” delivers with a subdued arrangement that revolves around El-P’s vocals while enveloping them in way that amplifies the deep feelings being expressed. El-P’s voice comes in right before the beat, signifying that this is an El-P song about El-P, not the vast world around him where he so often dwells. Instead of a track where he artfully, yet aggressively, points out the terrifying path our society may be taking, this is a song where we gain insight into the mind that has produced this brave, new music. When he proclaims, “I haven’t loved many people, I grew up afraid that I was crazy…”, it’s pretty easy to believe this fear hasn’t receded for El-P. This is what makes his persona rounded out and relatable; the fear of craziness (either of our own personal insanity or of a world gone mad) may be fundamental to our self-identity and connection to the outside world. This struggle, in particular, is the driving force behind many of El-P’s best tracks and certainly lies at the heart of “T.O.J.”.

VI Scose Poise

(from Confield, Warp, 2001)

Allmusic says that Confield “is a record to respect, not enjoy” which is an easy thing to say about an often-arrhythmic, “cold”-sounding record. Unfortunately, they couldn’t be further from the truth. As a non-musician I can’t really pinpoint what exactly to respect about Confield, or its opening track “VI Scose Poise”, in any sort of academic way. On the other hand, I can say that “VI Scose Poise” (as well as many other tracks on the album) is one of the most constantly entertaining and entrancing electronic songs ever made.

Much has been made about post-Tri-Repetae Autechre’s lack of an emotional core or anything resembling a danceable beat. Instead of the classical Warp sound they helped define in the 90s, autechre found a way to make what I think of as the most anti-ambient music of the decade. This is music to be listened to as actively as possible and if that is what you do, there will be a maze of sounds to appreciate and get lost in. Without very many hooks or grooves, “IV Scose Poise” remains locked in my mind via the rough sounds I associate with it: the variations on a ball spinning in a cup. This means that every time I listen to this track I feel as if I’m freshly hearing the combinations and the unexpected twists and turns composing the song’s structure. Specifically: at 2:00, I am always delighted to hear an ominous series of piano overtones that will somehow intertwine with the spinning ball motif for the final five minutes of the track before a slight, stuttering denoument in the last 20 seconds. The details in between, however, need to be heard fresh on each listen to appreciate the subtle brilliance of this composition. “VI Scose Poise” is one of many reasons why autechre should be considered on the same level as the true pioneers of electronic music like Richard D. James, Kraftwerk, Basic Channel, and Carl Craig.

Ian Curtis Wishlist

(From the album A Promise: 5 Rue Christine 2003)

When Jamie Stewart screams “I will take it too far” a minute and a half into “Ian Curtis Wishlist” he may as well be referring to his band’s approach to music: Too much emotional manipulation, too much vulnerability, too much discomfort, too many jarring crescendos. However, this is exactly what makes Xiu Xiu one of my favorite bands of the decade and “Ian Curtis Wishlist” the crowning achievement of their pre-Fabulous Muscles output.

The arrangement is characteristically all over the place, enveloping the listener in 45 seconds of shimmering noise followed by two minutes of a minimal soundscape, before erupting for a 45 second climax of thrift store instrument cacophony followed by a brief ambient outro. In between Jamie Stewart speak/shudders/sings some oblique but highly expressive lyrics addressed to himself. Of course, the microphone-saturating exclamation of “Ian Curtis… I can’t believe I said it: wishlist!” invokes the dark themes at the core of Xiu Xiu’s output as well as their obvious lineage from the darkest practitioners of post-punk (i.e. This Heat, Throbbing Gristle) and industrial music (i.e. Swans, Current 93, Nurse with Wound). At the same time, if you listen closely enough, Stewart and company are very astute social critics (see “Support Our Troops”):

Perhaps the combination of embarrassingly unguarded and gender-bending lyrics, pop song structures, and simultaneously whimsical and aggressive sound collages has placed Xiu Xiu in a place without a large cross section of music fans.  It’s easy to call them pretentious and immature, but Xiu Xiu are willing to explore noise and electronic composition while still highlighting the absurd beauty of a pop song hiding underneath the grotesque. For this reason, I consider them one of the most underrated bands currently operating. I could have easily chosen “I Luv the Valley, Oh”, “Fast Car”, “I Do What I Want When I Want”, or “Yellow Raspberry”  to highlight how unique and enjoyable a song they can come up with. Of course, some of their albums can grate and are poorly paced, but 6 albums and many compilations and EPs in, Xiu Xiu are yet to release anything that is not both challenging and rewarding in its own way. Besides, any band that can both cover a pussycat dolls song and direct a line toward US troops in Iraq asking “why should I care if you get killed?” is doing something right.