Blogarhythms

He was my “Rap dude to watch” last year. I gave him a shout out in yesterday’s post about another up-n-coming City of Angels emcee. And even if a whole new crop of rappers (like Black Spade, Kail and others) pop up this year that I think deserve following, the truth of the matter is that Los Angeles-based Blu is still that dude to watch in the Summer of ‘08.

I’ve known this was the case for more than a little while. In fact, in my summary of Blu & Exile’s Below the Heavens in my year-end wrap-up on Imageyenation I warned readers that if they thought that album was dope the shit he had in store this year was gonna kill ‘em. The first new project from the colorfully-named lyricist that I expect to elevate him from the talented newcomer he’s been recognized as to the modern-day Rap star he deserves to be is a collaborative effort between he and Detroit-based beatmaker and emcee Ta’Raach. Doing business as C.R.A.C. (pronounced crass), the duo’s LP, entitled The Piece Talks, hits stores today on Tres Records.

Collabo albums have been all the rage since Madlib teamed up with Dilla and then M.F. Doom and Danger Mouse did the same with the Metal Faced Villain and then Cee Lo. It’s easy for these sorts of records to result in a collection of random tracks where one guy spits over a random assortment of the other’s beats. But C.R.A.C. sets itself above that by employing a fully-realized group concept, embracing egalitarianism by having both emcees share rhyming duty, and paying attention to the details of songcraft. They come off like a real group, not just two dudes who wanted to make a few songs together.

The comfortableness of C.R.A.C.’s group dynamic was the thing that initially struck me about them, drawing comparisons in my mind to the ruff-rugged-n-raw chemistry of Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith of EPMD, possibly my favorite Hip-Hop duo of all time. This likeness to that dollar-making twosome was reinforced when I got to the song “Chill,” which is essentially a new-age cover of “You Got’s To Chill.” After that the thing that really stood out about The Piece Talks was the way it melds divergent styles, balancing raw street shit, tough-guy bravado, classic braggadocio, a subtle (and sometimes slyly sarcastic) social conscience, smooth musicality, rock-hard bangers and arty bohemian experimentalism. It’s the sort of album a lot of artists (many of them far-more famous or beloved) have tried to make in the post-Neo Soul, post-independent-Alt-Rap-era, but C.R.A.C. succeeds where most of them failed.

Just to rub their artistic bravery in our faces Blu and Ta’Raach open the album with “Buy Me Lunch,” a playfully bouncy Soul-infused Indie-Pop with jazzy guitar strums and toy xylophone plunks that ironically juxtaposes a pretty female vocal against caustically sarcastic ad-libbing from the emcees. The first time I listened to the disc it was a “what the fuck” moment even for me, but once I figured out what was going on it just made me dig these cats more. A few tracks later they delve into downtempo House and jazzy Electro on the languid spoken-word piece “CRACHAUSE.” And they drop another experimental cut, “Bullet Through Me,” a Sly Stone-esque slab of electronic Funk with fuzz guitar and grunting synths playing the backdrop for druggy singing and more spoken-word oratory towards the end of the album.

Sandwiched between those excursions outside of traditional boom-bap Hip-Hop is a stack of grimy, head-nodders that will satisfy fans of the individual output of both involved parties and the intersection between Cali underground Rap and Detroit Boom-Clap (like Jaylib, Guilty Simpson’s output on Stones Throw, etc) in general. I’m partial to the ethereal guitar strums, stumbling drums, horn-blasts and croonery of “Love Don’t,” “Respect” with it’s choppy string-and-vibe loops and cut up vocal-sample hook, the speedy breaks and atypically thuggish lyrics of the Wu-Tang-ish “Pop Dem Boyz,” and especially the bubbly synth-bass, swingin’ hi-hats and lyrically outstanding (not to mention charmingly charismatic) performance from Blu on “Go!”

C.R.A.C. “Go!”

With this and yesterday’s entry from Kail it looks like L.A. (with some help from the D) has the early Summer on lock as far as Hip-Hop’s concerned.

- El Keter