It's been a while (hey, I'm impatient) since something coming close
to classic arose from any vestiges of the U.S.A. hip-hopper
underground. A run of recent acclaimed discs has been too beset by
macho ego (El-P), cultivated this-is-hip-hop-man-ism (Mr.Lif),
bong-water (Reaching Quiet), or opacity (Themselves) to truly scale
the heights of greatness previously visited in pretty-recent-actually
days by the likes of, like, Aesop Rock (again and again), and
Cannibal Ox, and the Anti-Pop Consortium and such. And, of course,
here, now, is Busdriver & Radioinactive with Daedelus — yeah,
The Weather — kicking it out from their Los Angelean home
in something coming close to, like, busted-out classickness. They're
doing for hypermentallist short-attention-spanned comic-toned
rap-circus silliness what Sole's done for beards-and-ponytails as
IT-guy-by-day/mic-rocker-by-night hip-hop fashion statement. Doseone
may've thrown a sideways Themselves glance at anthemicism with that
"shove that gun up your ass" refrain against the thug-overlordzzz of
the hip-pop overground, but it don't have a stitch on The
Weather's cartoon-music-ish sentiment-tapping sing-along "just
because the world runs on oil doesn't mean oil-men should run the
world" on "Pen's Oil." It's the soulful center of this hilarious,
bright, bizarre, totally joyous disc, in which
'50s-chrome-plated/idealist-retrofuturism-fetishistic electro-monkey
tinkerer/thinker Daedelus and Sun-Ra-lovin'
hip-hop-as-childhood-nostalgia space-cadet Radioinactive make some
seriously silly beats, collecting a range of baroque tones and
crackling samples and droll spoken-words bits and busting them into
bits and pieces re-collaged in lurid fashion. Over which, the
respectively whiny/butch voices of Radioinactive and Busdriver give
off that great little-guy/big-guy comic air that reminds of those old
cartoons in which the small yappy dog and the fist-pounding bulldog
were best buds. Of course, amidst all this comedy, there are
thoughts aired about American foreign policy, paranoia, fear of
immigrants, sensationalist media reportage, the sex-centric nature of
the Internet, and gun-culture, in such spat-out to-and-fro
free-feeling flows as "you are confusing that Mercedes Benz emblem
for a peace-sign/ philanthropist check-clearing looks good at press
hearings/ and I'm mistaking that peace-sign for a crosshair/ agents
with earpieces tailing my Civic."
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