w/Ras Kass, Sleep, Blue Scholars
Fri Sept 13, I-Spy, $10, 6 pm.
Like New York's Definitive Jux (Cannibal Ox, Aesop Rock), the Bay Area's Quannum Projects (Blackalicious, Latyrx), and Seattle's Jasiri Media Group (Source of Labor, Beyond Reality), Minneapolis' vital independent record label Rhymesayers Entertainment shelters a distinct underground hiphop scene. Atmosphere and Eyedea & Abilities are the primary crews on the label, which, like Def Jux or Quannum Projects, forms a hiphop galaxy that's organized by similar styles, themes, and concerns.
In 2001, Rhymesayers Entertainment released Eyedea & Abilities' strange debut CD, First Born; the album is strange because the MC, Eyedea, does not so much rap as deliver involved lectures on existentialism (the study of being) and phenomenology (the study of consciousness). The only other rapper who comes close to Eyedea's approach is KRS-One, whose songs are often mini-lectures on current and historical matters (like his 1989 single "Why Is That?," which outlined, from rhyme to rhyme, the 4000-year history of black misrepresentation).
The essential difference between KRS-One and Eyedea is that KRS-One never asks questions but delivers answers; even "Why Is That?" is all answers. Eyedea's mini-lectures, on the other hand, offer only one certainty (that music is beautiful) and many uncertainties about memory, desire, madness, and nothingness. On a couple of songs, everything collapses under the weight of his heady inquiries ("Powered Water Too," for example). But for the most part, Eyedea manages to pack an amazing amount of theoretical matter onto DJ Abilities' hiphop platforms.
There is only one groove-driven track on First Born ("Big Shots"); the rest feature angular, abstract beats that impress the mind but leave the body cold. Despite their brazen intellectualism, Eyedea & Abilities are great live performers, a fact demonstrated by their success in both regional and national MC and DJ competitions (Eyedea has claimed three national MC battle championships, and DJ Abilities is a DMC regional champion). As Just-Ice once put it in another context, Eyedea & Abilities have certainly paid their dues.
