Shawn Jackson, Brand New Old Me
Tres Records

Shawn Jackson’s second album riffs on underground striver themes: surviving the mean streets of “Lah City,” toking on “purple swishas,” taking “Starget Practice,” and going on “T!LT.” The beats explore well-worn niches, too, from K-Salaam & Beatnick’s Kanye-styled chipmunk soul (“Good Writtens”) to Beat Maker Beat’s future soul funk (“Izichu”). The L.A. rapper negotiates these paths with aplomb, but his lyrics often reveal a disarming vulnerability. On the title track, he admits, “Lately I’ve been living with this monkey on my back/ Put my soul into the music but no money for the tracks.” Jackson has a nice flow, but he may have trouble standing out amidst the blogosphere’s mass of rappers that have also mastered the technique of rhyming, if not necessarily the trickier art of songwriting. Brand New Old Me presents his modest strides forward in the latter department.

This essay on the Roots’ How I Got Over was posted July 14 on Rhapsody.com’s Music Stuff Place blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.

Last week, I promised that I would abandon the concepts that have marked most of my Rap Is Not Pop entries and go deep on one album. This was my attempt. I didn’t get to mention my reservations about How I Got Over, from its meandering arena rock tone (interesting that critics called out B.o.B for that, but not the Roots — I guess it’s not what you do, but how you do it) to the way it ends, clumsily, with two tracks, “Web 20/20″ and “Hustla,” that didn’t match the rest of the album’s sound. But I’ve long since learned that it’s pointless to try and cram every thought about every track into a single critique. Better to focus on a theme, just as I would any other type of article, and give an impression of what the album sounds like. That leaves plenty of other nooks and crannies for listeners to explore.

Having said that, the essay just turned out okay. I made some writing mistakes.

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Rap Is Not Pop: The Roots’ Lost Paradise

Since 1996′s Illadelph Halflife, The Roots have explored social realism, portraying the mythical “streets” as a world of intractable crime, imminent dangers that require street smarts and split-second decisions, and blacks at risk of a high mortality rate — or, in scientific terms, a greater half-life. In some ways, Illadelph Halflife was a response to critics and fans who categorized the group as “jazz-rappers” after the brilliant 2004 1994 disc Do You Want More?!!!??! Much like Gang Starr, Digable Planets and other hip-hop acts saddled with the “acid jazz” tag, The Roots felt compelled to move in a more hardcore direction, albeit one that would continue to utilize their skills as excellent live musicians.

Illadelph Halflife also introduced another theme The Roots repeat to this day. Nineteen ninety-six was the year of De La Soul’s Stakes Is High. The East Coast-West Coast conflict, the incursion of organized gangs into the music industry, and Diddy and Dr. Dre’s commercialization of hardcore hip-hop all led rappers to portend that the music genre faced a virtual apocalypse. Now it seems silly that people actually believed authentic hip-hop culture would die just because G-funk and jiggy were so popular, but their concern felt very real back then, especially with the shooting deaths of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. on the horizon. Nearly 15 years later, and with the recent release of their ninth full-length album, How I Got Over, The Roots still sound the alarm.

The Roots aren’t just a cracking live band or a lineup of revolving musicians anchored by drummer and producer ?uestlove and rapper and vocalist Black Thought. It’s a sprawling collective. Philly emcee Dice Raw has been featured on every album, even though he isn’t an official member, and Truck North, Peedi Crakk and P.O.R.N. have made several appearances. Roots alumni include rapper Malik B., pianist and producer Scott Storch, keyboardist Kamal Gray, neo-soul vocalists the Jazzyfatnastees, poet Ursula Rucker, underrated multi-instrumentalist and producer James Poyser, and Incubus guitarist Ben Kenney — and that’s not counting frequent guests like Common and Mos Def.

“Walk alone, walk alone, I’m always walking alone, forever since the day I was born,” sings Kirk Douglas on “Walk Alone” from How I Got Over. However, the song features Truck North, P.O.R.N., Dice Raw, and Black Thought ruminating on their solitude, with Black Thought claiming, “I walk alone like the lost boys of Sierra Leone.” Its multitude of voices suggests that we may struggle as individuals, but we are never truly alone in spirit.

It’s not the only contradiction on How I Got Over. The title itself is widely assumed to be a celebration of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory, but the music’s downbeat tone is more indicative of the country’s subsequent soul-searching amidst a deep recession, political divisions and foreign wars. “Corporate monopoly/ Weak world economy/ Stock market toppling/ Mad marijuana, Oxycotin, and Klonopin/ Everybody out of it,” raps Black Thought on “Dear God 2.0,” a remix of Monsters of Folk’s “Dear God” (which itself seemed to revisit XTC’s “Dear God”). “Why is the world ugly when you made it in your image?” If the Roots have gotten over, then How I Got Over focuses on the personal and political torment they strive to overcome.

With its soft, melancholy keyboards from Frank Walker and ?uestlove’s strong yet understated drumming, How I Got Over may be The Roots’ most live and analog album since 1999′s Things Fall Apart. But while Things Fall Apart sounded defiant — a sonic representation of Okonkwo from Chinua Achebe’s literary masterpiece Things Fall Apart — the world-weary How I Got Over is lost in reflections. ?uestlove has called it a meditation on impending middle age, of turning 40 and taking, as he told Vibe.com, “one hard look in the mirror.” Left unspoken in the lyrics, yet mentioned enough in the group’s earlier albums that they continue to loom over their work, are those opportunities that now seem lost to time and chance.

For many, the rap wars of 1996 changed everything. There’s an entire generation of fans who firmly believe that the genre has been lost forever. Nothing can disabuse them of this notion, not even Drake’s Thank Me Later or Nas & Damian Marley’s Distant Relatives. They hear these recordings as lucky exceptions to mainstream rap strictures — or, as Black Thoughts rhymes on “Doin’ It Again,” “The unsung, under-appreciated, the one them underachievers had underestimated” — not as proof that there is a thriving hip-hop culture in spite of commercialism. Worse, it seems as if these fans may never return and are only too happy to relegate their love for hip-hop to youthful memories.

How I Got Over is melancholy, even tinged with tragedy. But it is not defeatist. The Roots invite newer emcees like Phonte Coleman and Blu to contribute, passing the torch to a younger generation. The album argues for hip-hop’s continued relevance amidst changing mores, and proves that The Roots’ vision of hip-hop as a form of unfettered creative exploration, not just regional hood niches, is still relevant. “I’m the definition of tragedy turned to triumph,” raps Black Thought on “The Fire.”

Or, as Douglas sings on the excellent title track, “Someone has to care.”

Marco Polo, The Stupendous Adventures Of Marco Polo
Duck Down Records

It seems counterintuitive for rising producer Marco Polo to turn The Stupendous Adventures of Marco Polo into a platform for dozens of MCs. But Marco Polo isn’t an instrumental beat maker; he excels at scoring tracks for a wide breadth of underground voices, from backpackers (Red Clay’s “Official”) to street rappers (Torae’s “Combat Drills”). Utilizing a range of sampled sounds, from “The Bridge’s” brassy funk horns to “Think of You Now’s” cool piano tones, Marco Polo compiles plenty of heaters. However, a few cuts (Granddaddy I.U.’s grumpy-sounding “The Veteran”) fall flat.

TOKiMONSTA, Cosmic Intoxication
Ramp Recordings

Jennifer “Tokimonsta” Lee has waded into a teeming L.A. beat scene with her Cosmic Intoxication debut. So give her praise for excelling at production fundamentals and spinning a cool vibe on this 21-minute EP. Her best numbers, including the breezily surreal “Line To Dot” and “Doing It My Way,” mine a melodic element reminiscent of mid-90s trip-hop. A few moments on Cosmic Intoxication, especially the soul chops of “Glaring Lights,” may sound like overly familiar clichés. With luck, however, Tokimonsta has only begun to develop a voice that separates her from the beat crowd.

Onra, Long Distance
All City Records

The key to Onra’s third album, Long Distance, is the heavy boogie rhythm of “My Comet.” Released as a 7-inch on All City Records two years ago, it sounded uncharacteristic of the French-Vietnamese producer’s sound at the time, which consisted of crusty post-Dilla donut loops. Now it anchors Long Distance, a tribute to hot early 80s soul and post-disco that stands as his best work to date.

Long Distance bears an unmistakably French touch. Its album cover depicts a nocturnal tableau reminiscent of M83’s Before the Dawn Heals Us. It swerves between post-disco soul and uptempo electro rockers like “Mechanical” (and its Euro-dance hook “Let’s make love tonight”). One of its best tracks, “High Hopes,” finds Reggie B replicating funk heroes Slave with his soft, yearning vocal delivery. On “Sitting Back,” Onra chops a vocal snippet and inserts it into a storm of distorted keyboard washes and flurries, aiming for club appeal as well as the head nod factor. For “The One,” he recruits T3 from Slum Village, who flips he flips a surprisingly sensitive tale of cheating and heartbreak over stiletto-sharp stabs and a drum machine tempo straight out of Cheryl Lynn’s “Encore.”

Onra stays faithful to the boogie theme throughout Long Distance, but he also stretches it to its breaking point. At 21 tracks, it’s probably too long by a few cuts. Some of these like “Girl,” where he loops a recording of a girl lusting after him despite having a boyfriend, push the album’s pace along. And “Oper8tor,” which inserts the vocoder-ized hook from Midnight Star’s “Operator” amidst a two-minute-long stutter step, has kitschy charm. But B-side loops such as “Moving” and “Rock On” add unnecessary filler to what is mostly a dynamic and focused set.

But if Onra freely (and masterfully) exploits the current Zeitgeist for all things boogie funk, he seems to have found his identity within it. His acclaimed Chinoiseries only emphasized the difficulty of replicating Dilla and Madlib’s loop aesthetic. 2009’s 1.0.8 had a frantic, hurried feel; unlike fellow Europeans such as Dorian Concept and Hudson Mohawke, he seemed uncomfortably toying with glitch funk. Long Distance certainly has its glitch elements – check the appropriately titled “Wonderland” for proof – but it’s nestled in a seductive dance floor groove. Onra’s true home, it seems, is in the thick of the night light haze.

This essay on Madlib’s first installment in his Medicine Music Show series was published in the January 27 issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Welcome to violence

Madlib, now in his hardcore phase, hands out sonic pamphlets like a prophet of doom

Late last year, Stones Throw Records announced that it would release a full-length album of tunes by its veritable resident producer, Madlib, in 2010 … every month. Dubbed Madlib Medicine Show, the 12-part series sounds like a rap nerd fantasy.

Ever since his critically lionized Quasimoto adventure, 2000’s The Unseen, when he adopted a helium voice and crafted adult cartoons straight out of Fritz the Cat and Le Planete Sauvage, the L.A. musician has defined an idiom of crackling sampled loops, slightly buggered raps, and thick clouds of weed smoke. Over 15 years deep into a career that kicked off with a cameo on the Alkaholiks 1993 debut 21 and Over, his enigmatic vision perseveres, even as the idealistic underground scene he once occupied – remember back in the 90s when his old group the Lootpack chastised wanna-be gangsta rappers on “The Antidote”? – has turned cynical, becoming obsessed with the same guns-drugs-porn-money quadrangle it once criticized the “mainstream” for.

Meanwhile, onetime critics who complained that Madlib produces too many records have been hushed by a rapacious Internet age, where weekly emissions of tracks and mixtapes are de rigueur. For example, L.A. indie rapper Blu, a promising inheritor of the West Coast hip hop tradition, has been on “hiatus” for well over a year as he crafts his major-label debut, yet still manages to upload several albums worth of free online “demos.” Madlib’s dozens of aliases (Yesterday’s New Quintet, DJ Rels, take your pick) and chaotic forays into post-bop, free jazz, soul-jazz broken beat, Brazilian Tropicalia and deep funk seem quaint by comparison.

Smartly, Madlib doesn’t give his music away for free. The Madlib Medicine Show may resemble those Internet “loosies” and “street albums” you downloaded last night, but he makes you pay for the privilege of hearing his work. (Or at least he tries to; no one is immune to the web’s torrential bootlegging.)

The first installment, No. 1: Before the Verdict, is particularly pointed in its message of commerce as a soul-destroying, mind-blowing shit-stem. The cover depicts a charred one-dollar bill (with a weed leaf embedded in a corner), an industrial plant spewing toxic waste, and the World Trade Center being bombed by an airplane. The interior features photos of strangely voodoo-fied Africans — one has a hand protruding from her mouth — and the cryptic message: “There were only three witnesses. Two are dead. The other isn’t talking.”

Before the Verdict’s 17 tracks consist of remixes of Guilty Simpson’s 2007 album Ode to the Ghetto, and a few previews of a forthcoming collaboration tentatively titled OJ Simpson. (Again, just like those damned Internet “street albums.”) Guilty is a decent if ornery thug rapper, but he’s clearly no match for Madlib’s symphony of 70s soul “rapps,” funky howls, vinyl hiss, DJ cuts, burps and farts, pungent jokes culled from 60s comedy albums (Redd Foxx and Millie Jackson!) and police scanner snippets. The Detroit rapper’s litanies about “Gettin’ Bitches” and “Robbery” are vocal anchors drowned by the Madlib Invazion’s furiously funky creativity.

Remember when that Quasimoto album intoned at the very beginning, “Welcome to violence”? These days, Madlib doesn’t just promise it. In rave terms, he has entered his hardcore phase. No longer positive and consciousness-expanding, the blessed weed smoke is fuel for a crank personality. The transformation is compelling, hilarious and frightening. As the rap world’s version of “reality” narrows into a handful of masculine fantasies, Madlib has become the era’s pamphleteer, printing out screaming headlines like a crazed prophet of doom.

Not all of his current work sounds like a ghetto dystopia. On his 2008 homage to his late friend James “J Dilla” Yancey, Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6: A Tribute To…, Madlib employed the same collagist techniques with melancholy, loving care.

And then there’s the other album Madlib produced this month, Strong Arm Steady’s In Search of Stoney Jackson. The L.A. group fares somewhat better than Guilty Simpson. Madlib lets their hard-rock rhymes breathe a little, before snuffing them with musical ether.

“Stop giving juice to the Raiders, ’cause Al Davis never paid us.”

In his clumsily assembled documentary Straight Outta L.A., Ice Cube tells the viewer that he rapped these words because he had fallen out of love with the Los Angeles Raiders. His hometown team had lost its swagger. Besides, he rationalizes, he was making Hollywood moves with Boyz N The Hood, and after leaving his group N.W.A., he became a solo star with new dreams and schemes.

The truth is more complex. Ice Cube was upset at the Raiders because, well, Al Davis never paid them. He felt (much as Run-DMC once did towards Adidas) that he and N.W.A. deserved some kind of payment for relentlessly promoting the team’s iconography during their legendary Straight Outta Compton run. But that inconvenient truth is carefully omitted from Straight Outta L.A., which was made for ESPN’s ongoing “30 for 30″ documentary series — along with mention of the not-safe-for-broadcast song title from which the aforementioned lyric came, “The Wrong Nigga to Fuck Wit,” and its accompanying album Death Certificate, a violently funny, willfully obnoxious, and distressingly xenophobic landmark that critics and fans still have trouble contending with.

It’s not the only way in which Ice Cube fudges with facts. Straight Outta L.A. is split into four sections. The first is a pithy history of the Oakland Raiders’ 70s heyday, owner Al Davis’ maverick ways (though, oddly, Cube doesn’t explain how former coach Davis engineered a takeover of the team), and its eventual move to sunny Los Angeles in 1982 in search of luxury boxes.” “This was one of the greatest days of my life,” narrates Cube of the day when the Oakland Raiders became the L.A. Raiders. Section two delves into Hollywood’s embrace of the Raiders and the rise of N.W.A., which Cube modestly claims was single-handedly responsible for making Raiders’ silver-and-black colors a pop phenomenon. Section three marks the decline — “The Raiders did something you never do in L.A. Lose.” The final part looks wistfully at the franchise’s return to Oakland in 1995 after the city never delivered those promised luxury boxes. Cube claims that the Raiders will always be “our team” until, uh, L.A. gets another NFL franchise.

To buffer his claims of great influence, Cube sticks the N.W.A. material in the second section, when the Raiders were blowing up. It’s historically inaccurate, because the L.A. Raiders’ initial flourish (including a 1984 Super Bowl win) took place in the early and mid-80s. By the time of 1989′s Straight Outta Compton (and, if you want, 1987′s N.W.A. and the Posse), the Raiders were mired in a four-season losing streak. N.W.A.’s association with “the Silver and Black” was more apropos of the third section, when those colors became associated with West Coast thug-ism; mobs of toughs and gang bangers roamed the Memorial Stadium bleachers and tailgate parties; and prosperous Angelenos abandoned the franchise and, for the most part, never came back, even after Davis hired Art Shell (the NFL’s first black coach) and turned the Raiders around. In fact, the N.W.A./Raiders fad took place just before the 1990-1991 season, when the team went 12-4 and led the AFC West. (Perhaps that oversight of the L.A. Raiders final winning years led Cube to forget about the L.A. Raiders’ two-sport superstar Bo Jackson.)

It’s a neat editing trick: matching N.W.A.’s rise with the Raiders glory years, and then hardly mentioning the group during the team’s decline and the ugly aspects of “the Silver and Black” gangster lifestyle.

Cube constantly tells us, especially in the opening minutes, that the 70s Raiders propensity for gridiron violence attracted him. He’s the wrong person to untangle N.W.A.’s knotty pop culture legacy. Straight Outta L.A. presents the blaring headlines about kids getting their Raiders Starter jackets boosted at school, but it’s presented as mere cultural detritus, not a direct result of N.W.A. — a group that the documentary proudly notes “presented itself as a gang.” Same with the missing fans that didn’t want to deal with the working-class South Central neighborhood surrounding Memorial Stadium, or the football jerks who made the stadium their home. (Former Pro Bowl-er Todd Christensen admits that he didn’t take his family to Raiders home games.) N.W.A. isn’t solely to blame for the Raiders leaving Los Angeles, of course, just as it isn’t the only factor behind the Raiders fad. But Cube inflates the group’s admittedly significant role in the rise of Raider Nation and tries to scrub its name out of the ensuing debacle.

As a former G.O.A.T.-level rapper who has mostly abandoned hip-hop for a commercially successful and artistically uneven acting, directing, and production career (his forthcoming TNT series based on his 2005 family film Are We There Yet? looks like Tyler Perry-style hackwork), Cube has a keen interest in establishing N.W.A.’s place in Raider lore. He probably isn’t the most objective person to tell the Straight Outta L.A. story. Then again, the “30 for 30″ documentary series has yielded mixed results, with too many entries relying on old athletes yapping about how great they once were. Straight Outta L.A. boasts that grainy, expertly cut game day footage typical of the series, interviews with vets like Marcus Allen and Howie Long, and an incisive sit-down with a decaying Al Davis. It’s all assembled into a breezy, colorful experience. Cube has clearly done his homework (with undoubtedly considerable production help from ESPN).

At one point during Straight Outta L.A., Cube recruits Snoop Dogg to wander down the Memorial Stadium steps, lope onto the field, and playfully toss a football while reminiscing about the glory days of the L.A. Raiders and N.W.A. It’s an entertaining bit of hagiography, and it’s easy to imagine Cube as one of those old-timers eager to burnish his legacy, truth be damned.

For information on future airings, visit the ESPN “30 for 30″ website.

Ninjasonik, Art School Girls
Green Owl/Chief Records

This full-length from a trio of Brooklyn smart-asses is a puzzling conceit of hipster in-jokes. Ninjasonik is undoubtedly the Art School Girls in the title, flipping through cool indie styles like a wardrobe of vintage clothes. Get past the pretension, and some of the songs aren’t bad, particularly the thumping hip-house jams “Picture Party” and “Stir,” and the stuttering electro of “All My Friends.” “I don’t care about who you are and what you wear/I just want to party and forget all my cares,” raps Telli on the latter before sarcastically adding, “All my friends are in bands.”

Masta Killa, Live
Gold Dust Media

Masta Killa has quietly carved out a fine solo career independent of his Wu-Tang Clan brothers, issuing modest gems like 2004’s No Said Date. On Live, the New York rapper “keeps it classical like Yo-Yo Ma” for a collection of live performances, delivering energetic solo highlights like “School” and “Silverbacks” as well as standout guest verses for “Duel of the Iron Mic” and “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’.” GZA, Inspectah Deck and others show up in support of this talented and highly underrated MC.

Inspectah Deck, Manifesto
Traffic Entertainment

Inspectah Deck has dropped many classic verses and hooks for his Wu-Tang team, from “C.R.E.A.M.” to “Hollow Bones.” But unlike Ghostface Killah and Method Man, he never evolved into a compelling solo artist. Inspectah Deck’s latest attempt, the flat-footed Manifesto, doesn’t have much to recommend other than several high-profile guests, including Raekwon (“The Big Game”), Termanology and Planet Asia (“Serious Rappin’”), Cormega (“Born Survivor”) and Kurupt and Billy Danze (“Gotta Bang”); and a decent track or two (“Do What U Gotta”).