Oddisee
Foot in the Door
Halftooth

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

The D.C.-raised emcee and producer Amir “Oddisee” Mohamed has found favor with conscious hip-hop audiences by emphasizing morality and substantive content over commercial pretensions, even if his lyrics fall short of greatness. On his latest, Foot in the Door, he covers topics such as minstrelsy in hip-hop, Islam and gentrification. Granted, Oddisee doesn’t always come off as the world’s greatest politician, given that he traffics in sentimentality and often sees things in stark terms of black and white, or good and evil. On a particularly fierce track “Gentrification,” he complains that an influx of Toms and Janes displaced the Leroys in his neighborhood; moreover, he scorns white people for replacing all the old mom-and-pop stores with Starbucks and Ikea, and then doubling the price of a chili dog and fries at Ben’s Chili Bowl. Such clichés probably detract from Oddisee’s skills as a politically-astute lyricist. Still, he shows he can speak intelligently on something other than his wardrobe. Considering that New York’s current rap kingpin only just decided to broach the subject of Hurricane Katrina, Oddisee’s way ahead of the game.

Oddisee’s production — which owes its style to mentors Kev Brown and veteran DJ Jazzy Jeff — mostly outpaces his lyrical content, though it’s not aimed for a commercial audience, either. Essentially, this guy does the exact opposite of what anyone trying to make a hit record would do. He includes 34 tracks instead of the requisite 8 or 10. Rather than tap into the familiar hip-hop album formula (which comprises one or two discernible club songs, the requisite fallen comrades song, and the obligatory sensitive guy song, with some filler in between) Oddisee uses smooth beats throughout, often blending the cuts together so seamlessly (thanks to Jazzy Jeff, who “mixed” the songs together like a DJ set) that they sound like one long, sprawling track.

Oddisee’s uniform musical style undermines the replay value of Foot in the Door, even if it makes the initial listening experience more pleasurable. But it doesn’t seem like he’s out to make something to turn out a dancefloor or get mad radio play, anyway. He’s trying to accomplish what the Perceptionists did with Black Dialogue: Make an album with a strident political message that’s hooky enough to convert the uninitiated. On that level, he succeeds.

– Rachel Swan

Planet Asia
The Medicine
ABB

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

West Coast battle rapper Planet Asia is not a team player — in fact, he’s kind of a hip-hop counterpart to basketball showboat Kobe Bryant — and his rap persona will typically outshine anyone who tries to share the stage with him. So it’s not surprising that Asia comes a lot harder on his new solo album, The Medicine, than on previous collaborations with Rasco, his lesser counterpart in the duo Cali Agents. Characterized by the toughness and elegance of its flows, The Medicine coheres better than the Agents’ 2004 release Head of State, where the duo sounded like they couldn’t decide whether or not they wanted to make a hip-hop album or a pop album.

This time Asia veers towards the pop side, as evinced by his frequent lapses into badass caricature (on “Get Down or Lay Down” he gleefully mixes metaphors for rap battles, heists and big nuts), his obligatory looped elevator beat song (“In Love With You” features an addictive hook by R&B vocalist Jonell) and even the title of his new label, Gold Chain Music (Asia obviously realized that few women can resist the transfixing powers of gold chains). The persona actually suits him just fine and he plays it with brio. He takes obvious pleasure in bragging about how fresh he is, and throws in quippy, politically-incorrect lyrics about being “onstage with more niggas than Fela Kuti” (which sounds about right to anyone who has seen him perform live).

Granted, the one thing Head of State had going for it was production. The beats on The Medicine, mostly composed by Evidence of L.A.’s Dilated Peoples, are hit-or-miss and often sound too flat or too flowery for Asia’s megalomaniac personality. As someone who often seemed to be on the verge of national stardom, only to never quite make it, Planet Asia might get his just desserts if he could find a Mannie Fresh or Dr. Dre who’d put up with him. Or maybe he should just learn to make his own beats. No need to share the spotlight, after all.

– Rachel Swan

Peanut Butter Wolf presents
Chrome Children
Stones Throw

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

There are many things in this world that you can only understand if you’re, well, really high. The Friday series might be one of them. James Joyce would be another. And, judging from the product reviews on Amazon.com — many of which use descriptive terms like “blunted” — Stones Throw albums seem to make a lot more sense if you’ve smoked a couple joints before you listen to them. The label’s new compilation, Chrome Children, is no exception.

The latest in a spate of albums sponsored by Adult Swim, Chrome Children comprises 19 original tracks, and is (fortunately) void of the quirky, product-placement-oriented cartoons that kept popping up on Danger Doom’s The Mouse and the Mask. Surprisingly, it coheres as an album. All Stones Throw emcees have a dribbly, stream-of-consciousness rhyme style that makes them seem frighteningly smart and intimidatingly cool, so that when they occasionally devolve into sexy-thug caricature (i.e., when Guilty Simpson carps about his paper chase and that pretty chick with the bubble booty on “Clap Your Hands,” and when MED gabs about busting a nut with his whole dick in her throat on “All I Know”) it seems like a joke. Even the phrase “bust a nut” sounds self-consciously ironic and glib. The beats on Chrome Children are, for the most part, as tough, jagged and percussive as the rappers’ vocals. Whenever the sounds come together to form a solid lick or idea, it seems like an accident.

Granted, Stones Throw artists aren’t pretty enough to convert the uninitiated. Although Oh No’s skronky “Oh Zone”; J Dilla’s psychedelic, Grateful Dead-oriented “Nothing Like This”; and Georgia Ann Muldrow’s mawkish “Simply a Joy” (a valiant attempt at neo-soul) manage to shore up a little sentimentality, the rest of the album is geared towards people who gravitate to dark, incomprehensible and atonal music. Or stoners.

– Rachel Swan

Zion-I & the Grouch
Heroes in the City of Dope
Om

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Backpackers have a hard time authenticating themselves in the rap game. They’re less parochial than their gangsta counter parts. They seem smart, nerdy and non-threatening, and often appeal to teenage suburbanites or college kids who want to sample ghetto life without leaving their white caves. They get no love from BET or the dominant hip-hop radio stations. Above all, they’re not speaking through the filter of what a rapper is supposed to be, i.e. a flossy playa or criminally-minded thug who wears 10 Gs around his neck and spends a lot of time trying not to look soft in front of his padnas. It’s difficult to recast those stereotypes without sacrificing street cred — hence the timeworn division between “underground” and “commercial” hip-hop — and few artists are brave enough to try. The exception would be Zion-I,
the internationally-known Oakland duo that’s spent the last two years trying to carve out a space for itself in the Bay Area’s hyphy movement while maintaining its politically-edged lyrics and “conscious” sensibility. The group’s Heroes in the City of Dope, a collabo with Grouch of Living Legends, shows that MC Zion and producer Amp Live are fumbling to find a happy middle ground.

The line “City of Dope” comes from an old Too $hort song of the same name, which kicks off with the lyric, “City of dope, I call it Oak/Can’t be broke, selling coke.” Since intertextuality usually amounts to genuflection in hip-hop, it’s obvious that Zion is trying to situate himself in a lineage of Oakland rap hustlers that began with $hort. At the same time he’s updating the meaning of “dope,” which has several iterations in hip-hop culture. Zion and Grouch appear to be casting themselves as heroes who emerged from a dope-ass city, rather than heroes with a mission to rescue Oakland from dope dealers. Most of the tracks on City of Dope put a positive spin on the “town” theme. The idea is that Zion and Grouch, despite being torchbearers for political correctness, still feel a sense of rootedness in Oakland and a certain affinity to the hyphy movement. Yet they’re also trying to go beyond it. These guys insist they’re capable of “going dumb” without actually going dumb.

Zion-I is known as the first “conscious” rap outfit to really break out an olive branch with the hyphy movement, given their recent collaborations with the Team and Mistah F.A.B. (The latter appears on “Hit ‘Em,” one of City of Dope’s strongest tracks.) Still, the musicianship in Amp Live’s beats — indeed, the beats on this album are beautiful — and the morality of the emcees’ lyrics make the trio seem a little too schoolmarm-ish to fully cross over. (For example, on “Too Much,” Zion castigates a teenage schoolgirl for acting too promiscuous.) And even though a lot of backpacker heads seem to have a real hard-on for the Grouch, his voice doesn’t have the right pitch or rhythm for hyphy.

Overall, City of Dope doesn’t cohere as well as Zion-I’s two previous albums, 2003’s Deep Water Slang V.2.0 and last year’s True & Livin’. But it certainly beats the hell out of a lot of Top 40 hip-hop. In comparison to P-Diddy’s self-aggrandizing Press Play, Yung Joc’s utterly disappointing New Joc City and Rick Ross’ vapid Port of Miami — all poised to become three of the year’s most successful rap albums — at least Zion-I and the Grouch are going in the right direction.

– Rachel Swan

Dan the Automator presents
2K7
Decon

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

When you pay a bunch of top-caliber rappers ridiculous amounts of money to create the soundtrack for a basketball-themed video game, you’re gonna get thirteen tracks that sound, well, strained.

That’s not to say rappers have never produced any memorable songs about basketball. J-Zone used the sport to great effect on his 2004 number “A Friendly Game of Basketball” (off the album A Job Ain’t Nothin’ But Work), which was actually about dissing other emcees (since J-Zone’s game is apparently just sooooo much tighter). Yet the verses on 2K7 are spotty at best.

For example, take E-40 and San Quinn’s “Baller Blockin’”. Known as the patron saint of Yay Area slang, E-40 sounds ingenious when he tackles subjects he actually cares about (I’ll spare you the line about Jesus Christ having dreads since it’s already been massaged to death). Evidently, basketball isn’t one of them. It’s not as if 40 Water plummets to yet-unseen levels of mediocrity on 2K7. He does regale us with such little gems as “Earth is my turf, up and down them basketball court/Sometimes I get (squeaking sound) ‘cuz of the way I wear my shorts.” But he definitely sounds like a grudging accomplice to his own exploitation, (i.e. someone who’s allowing his lyrics to be pimped). Same goes for San Quinn, who already had a bad habit of rhyming “broad” with “broad” and “sun” with “sun” (like, you know, “Phoenix Suns/Hot as the sun”). Here, he does it with gusto.

Since nobody’s actually saying shit, we’re forced to focus on the production, which also varies in quality. (Granted, it’s hard to cut Dan the Automator any slack after the staggering genius that was Dr. Octagon and Handsome Boy Modeling School.) The beat for Mos Def & Anwar Superstar’s “Here Comes the Champ” is Street Fighter-caliber fare, but a lot of the tracks are worth skipping over. Even the Automator remix of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Lyrics to Go” is at the level of Mario Kart or Donkey Kong.

To be fair, 2K7 isn’t cluttered with throwaways. As far as video game soundtracks go it can definitely hold its own. But none of the verses and beats sound convincing, either. If you actually shell out cash for this album, you might be left feeling as though you’ve been played.

– Rachel Swan