Monday, June 29, 2009

Having to Crack the Window

Ever since Outkast has started to fade from the limelight, Hip-Hop just doesn’t smell the same. I always imagined Big Boi and Andre 3000 were carrying on the funk in the tradition of George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. Break-beats on the turntable sweltered in a purple and green haze made them one of most original and influential crews in the late nineties, if not the best duo of all time.

There will never be another space-bass or “brown-stallion horse with skates on“ but Abstract Rude is carrying on the tradition after the smoke clears with his newest release Rejuvenation. An established voice in the Fat Jack crew during the rise and proliferation MC’s in California during the nineties, he has a lyrical pedigree to be respected and a flow that makes bleach stank. The title track is a lyrical manifesto when he rhymes:

“My redirect / is filled with predicates / including subjects / my pronouns / build for the U and I / to use they judgment / my adverb and your clause supports / my course of action / My Preferential phrase / will add many more attachments / When paragraphs give life / sentences do time / hard times / hard rhymes / in every line.”

While playing Hip-Hop Historian on “Diggin It?”

“So call AB a chief rocker / a corner-box battle / could use a ghetto-blaster or a beat-boxer / to Dane to Dane the human beat boxer / to Rah Zeal and Kill Keel we rock well acapella / we keep developing high level intelligence / Fundamentally acceling every different era / from Jazzy Jeff to Jeff Jeff to Mos Def / to X-Clan and YZ and Wyclef.”


Rejuvenation is a solid release but I can’t help feeling Vitamin-D’s production starts to taper off half way through the album. The opening track “Hip-Hop Ryde” is everything I could ask for, with Abstract’s heavy voice lacing the melody on slow burn. Some of the other tracks don’t offer the kind of glow I was hoping for, I just wanted more funk. Long Live the Funk! Uh!