I feel like dookie, yo! I dunno what’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter, ’cause being sick in the Summertime sucks ! Illness just feels wrong when it’s hot outside. And that wrongness is exacerbated by sitting in a humid room, hunched over a computer with an unknown ailment that feels like a tiny monster’s taken-up residence inside you and is gnawing on the important stuff that helps you live as you attempt to wax enthusiastic about records. You could get lucky though, and one of those records might have the word “monster” in the title. That’d be one helluva segue! Oh look, that’s exactly what happened! Score!
Hopefully you’ve noticed Monster Maker, the new “cross-genre-fusion” album teaming Bronx-born emcee C-Rayz Walz with Washington D.C.-based DJ/producer Sharkey, in our “Now Here This” section. But I’ve been looking forward to it all year, so I can’t resist talking it up too! I’ve been a C-Rayz fan since he stole the show on Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein and Aesop Rock’s Labor Days. I wasn’t as crazy about Sharkey’s production album, but it showed he had talent and good ideas. Just how good didn’t become apparent until I heard the Monster Maker song “My Way,” a stomping Indie-meets-Electro-meets-Hip-Hop jam. A Curtis Mayfield-esque number called “This Ol’ Twisted World” only served to seal the deal. Even though these tunes are something of a departure for Walz, other cuts (notably “The Moment Before Crazy” featuring Vast Aire, and “Slim Chances”) could’ve easily come from his previous LPs, and the album as a whole works surprisingly well as a C-Rayz record, despite it’s experimentalism. In fact, it may be his most focused project to-date thanks to Sharkey’s RJD2-meets-Doc (of Esthero and Res fame) beats, and a concept holding it all together.
I just mentioned it yesterday, and coincidentally, Don’t Give Up, the collaboration between Chicago’s Serengeti and Polyphonic, is also a non-traditional sort-of Hip-Hop album that finds Geti stretching-out over Poly’s experimental beats and crooning on a number of cuts. In the past I’ve compared Serengeti to MF Doom, so I guess the largely electronic soundscapes of Don’t Give Up would make it his “Viktor Vaughn.” Truthfully though, it sounds more like his “Postal Service.” And I’m sure the similarity between titles (theirs was called Give Up) isn’t a coincidence. So I guess he’s actually Ben Gibbard, not Doom. Regardless, the music is beautiful. Geti’s always been charming, but his off-kilter singing adds to that exponentially. And Polyphonic’s array of sonic textures, including Detroit Techno on “Waste of Time,” Downtempo Hip-Hop & Drum-N-Bass on “Puppydog Love,” Electro-Bossa-Nova on “Slew of Things Differently,” pseudo-Dustep on “Eleven”, and glitchy Lap-Pop elsewhere, is rapturous. Don’t Give Up is another “monster” record from the prolific Serengeti, and is already one of my favorite discs of the year.
If you liked Gnarls Barkley and that Grand Analog record I featured last week, peep Monster Maker. And if you liked Polyphonic’s Juba Dance joint, Postal Service, Fat Jon and Styrofoam’s The Same Channel, or Vik Vaughn check for Don’t Give Up. Listening to both actually made me feel a little less “dookified.”
-El Keter