Astute Blogareaders have probably noted that there’s been an erroneous announcement on the OKP front-page about a post concerning Left Coast indieground Rap duo New Jack Hustle adorning this blog since last week. The even less canny among you should have observed a lack of posts in general during the latter half of last week.
This absence of posts, and the especially conspicuous lack of a post about New Jack Hustle, was due wholly to the fact that my computer seemingly died last Tuesday night. As it turns out, all news about my computer’s untimely passing was, much to my relief, greatly exaggerated. One of my hard drives went kaput, but not one I kept important data on and only some minor tweaking was required to get my computer back up and running. So, after spending some money I don’t have on a quick repair, and only a few days out of order, I’m back in action.
Any efforts I made to time my post about New Jack Hustle, a collaboration between Los Angeles/Providence-bred emcee Shawn Jackson and rapper/producer Newman of Los Angeles/Seattle-based true-school revivalists Giant Panda, to coincide with the October 21st release date of their debut album Sound Check came to naught last week. But even if technical difficulties resulted in my carefully laid plan amounting to nothing more than jack-poop I couldn’t front on the efforts of these two not-so-new-jacks by not following up on their freshman outing together.
Both Shawn and Newman already released albums, both of which were featured here on Blogarhythms, earlier this Summer. Newman and his Giant Panda bandmates dropped their newest LP Electric Laser in May, and Shawn’s long-awaited debut hit stores in July, both via Tres Records. Sound Check is a product of a whirlwind seven-day recording session in Portland, Oregon which pit Jackson’s tumbling verbals against Newman’s crackling neo-New School tracks on “old-fashioned” two-inch tape. It’s another landmark release for the label during a year that’s witnessed the publication of a string of stellar albums including Blu’s two collabo LPs, The Piece Talks and Johnson&Jonson, with Ta’Raach and Mainframe respectively.
Billed as “Newman on the beats” and “Shawn Jackson on the raps,” Sound Check isn’t necessarily as simple as all that. Newman handles microphone duties on a few of the album’s thirteen cuts. And since it was recorded “on location” in Portland a number of the city’s Hip-Hop luminaries such as producer/rapper Ohmega Watts and Lifesavas members Vursatyle and Reverend Shines contribute as well. No doubt the hand-in-glove fit of Newman’s dusty production aesthetic and Jackson’s “wise-guy who’s also a guy who’s wise” punchlines is the heart of the album though. And I gotta just put it out there that, while I dug Shawn’s official debut First of All, Sound Check is the Shawn Jackson album I’ve been waiting for since 2004.
Sound Check’s success is due in large part to it’s playfully gritty, sampledelic production. The beats on First of All were diverse, a mingling of neo-Boom-Bap drums, sinewy bass programming, rollicking breaks, spacey samples and jazzy loops. But Sound Check owes more stylistically to late ’80s & early ’90s Rap,and the groups like Newman’s Giant Panda, their labelmates People Under the Stairs, Ugly Duckling and Shawn Jackson’s homeboys Time Machine who spearheaded the throwback-Rap movement. While Jackson himself seems to have taken up a similar mantle to his labelmate Blu, moving with peculiar ease between nut-grabbing b-boyisms, boisterous punchlines, intellectual witticisms, societal observations and introspection.
It should come as no surprise then that Sound Check serves as a nice companion to Blu and Mainframe’s Johnson&Jonson. It also recalls the distractedly cynical but raucously fun style of Brooklyn’s Nuk Fam and their Queens-based homeboy Cool Calm Pete. I was even reminded of Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s breakout release as Black Star (see the retro-Marley Marl/Juice Crew-style Josie-funk-flavored “More” and the “All Night Long”-interpolating “Lionel” featuring Ohmega Watts), and a couple tracks flash back to the spirit of Hard to Earn-era Gang Starr (see “Inglewood,” “Saturday Night,” a deconstruction of the Reagan/Bush empire called “Ronald” featuring Vursatyle, and “Last Newport”) and Organized Konfusion’s (see “Surprises”) self-titled debut. The song “Theme Music” on the other hand purposefully channels the group’s sort-of-namesake, Ice-T’s 1991 hit “New Jack Hustler,” flipping that track’s familiar rolling bassline.
New Jack Hustle “Theme Music”
I’m loving this album! And if you loved a Blu record this year, dug on Time Machine’s first album, or coveted some of Blogarhythms’ favorite Hip-Hop LPs of ‘07 like 100dBs and Ryan O’Neil’s The Adventures of… or Esoteric’s Egoclapper you’ll love having Sound Check in your life and in your ear too. Whether you’re a new jack who knows their shit, or an old head searching for satisfaction in a world of disposable ringtone Rap, New Jack Hustle’s sound is one you’ve got to check for.
Oh, and just to give credit where credit is due, my computer may have never been resurrected if it weren’t for the intervention of my homeboy and sometime collaborator, a Rap guy named Sankofa from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Without him I might not be typing this post right now. So go to his website and download one of his many free EPs. His most recent, the Bowl of Politics EP, even has one of our collabos on it!
Thanks…
