GUILTY SIMPSON
Ode to the Ghetto
(Stones Throw)
Pitchfork can suck it. Those pastoral-pandering pricks panned this,
Guilty’s debut album; maybe they’re not into Stones Throw pairing their
typically critically lauded producers with little known street rappers
(the first being the underrated Roc C). It puts me in mind of the
label’s scores of neckbeard fans, who probably can’t stomach hardcore
hiphop—mellow stoners and frail indie-bros who’d corner you at a
party to spiel for hours about Madlib’s use of negative space, but
don’t know shit about the Lootpack. Oh hell no!
This is definitely the hardest record Stones Throw has dropped, and
it is already one of my favorites. Ode is the best Detroit
hiphop album to drop since Slum Village’s self-titled ’05 album,
showcasing the vicious rhymes of Mr. Simpson, whose bellicose,
boiled-down-to-syrup wordplay owes everything to a man both venerated
and underrated (as an MC, that is), the man who put him on, J
Dilla.
In one fell swoop, Guilt-Man takes the “saying more with less”
crown, making vivid portraits of his hood’s desperate, trifling
characters sparkle with personality while utilizing the slickest of
double entendres and rhyme schemes so deceptively simple as to seem
stunningly elementary.
The hardcore often gives way to the hilarious as well. Simpson’s
frequently on display sense of humor is so damn dry, it’s BBC. His ease
on the mic, and over the future-primitive production from the Stones
Throw coterie (Oh No, Madlib, Black Milk, J Dilla, and DJ Babu fit
Guilt with an ensemble of gravel-grit digital menace that will have
nerds crying for an instrumental version), reveal him as a fully formed
hardcore MC who’d sound as natural next to Bun B as he does Sean P (on
the fucking flambé “Run”).
Stones Throw, I feel it, and I’m fuckin’ with y’all—let’s
reclaim this underground rap shit. Clack clack! LARRY MIZELL JR.
DISKJOKKE
Staying In
(Smalltown Supersound)
What is it about Norwegian dance acts, anyway? Are we really hearing
that chilly-frosty thing invariably mentioned when trying to describe
their music—”they” meaning Röyksopp, Lindstrøm &
Prins Thomas, and now diskJokke, christened Joachin Dyrdahl in
Oslo—or are we willing it into our ears based on a story too good
to resist? Europeans are as exotically other as anyone, after all. But
in the mind’s ear, it’s hard not to hear much of Staying In echoing off icy tundra walls while disco lights do wondrously kitschy
things to the snow.
Take Staying In‘s title track, which laces a wobbly
musicbox tune with effervescent salsa horns, like tomato sauce on an
off-white canvas. “I Was Go to Marrocco and I Don’t See You” (not a
typo) owes Daft Punk’s riff mastery, Carl Sagan soundtracks,
Billboard Hot Club Play Top 50 tripe, and the trend for (as
one 2007 comp put it) milky disco, all more or less simultaneously.
“Interpolation” is superb blip-funk electro tempered with a lovely,
clacking percussive overlay. “Cold Out” is iciest of all, and not just
for its title: steel drums turned to peaches in a can, blips marking
time and territory, percussion chasing buzzing low-end up a tunnel.
It’s not hugely ambitious, but Dyrdahl’s grasp of the groove and sonic
basics is distinctively impressive. What the album Staying In reminds me most of is Röyksopp’s Melody A.M. While
nothing on diskJokke’s album is as surefire as “Eple” or as widescreen
ambitious as “Röyksopp’s Night Out,” Dyrdahl comes close often
enough for it not to matter, and fashions the better whole.
MICHAELANGELO MATOS
DESTROYER
Trouble in Dreams
(Merge)
Smart people who care about lyrics have bowed in Daniel Bejar’s
direction for so long that I’ve always wondered what I was missing. As
a New Pornographers fan, I’ve enjoyed his songs on their albums,
sometimes for their own sake (“Myriad Harbour”) but more often as
changes of pace. Bejar’s albums as Destroyer mostly left me blank, even
if I could hear how smart they were—particularly 2006’s
Destroyer’s Rubies, which was a creative leap plain even to a
relative outsider like me. Some people have guilty pleasures; for me,
not understanding a band loved by people I admire is the reverse of
that—guilt induced by lack of pleasure.
I wanted to write about Trouble in Dreams largely as a
make-or-break, and guess what? It worked, sort of. Because while I now
can officially say I like Destroyer, I still don’t hear the words as
far to the fore as others do. Bejar’s lyrics are smart and put together
well, and they’re so offhanded the envy he inspires in fellow
songwriters is understandable. But I come back to this record for the
music. The guitar-powered coda of “My Favorite Year” is the most
satisfying part of the song; the droning guitar and show piano steal
“Shooting Rockets (from the Desk of Night’s Ape)” from its dramatic
lyric; and while “Blue Flower/Blue Flame” is certainly ear-catchingly
wry (“A woman by another name is not a woman”), it’s the song’s sweet
and simple tune that draws and holds.
MICHAELANGELO MATOS
Kristen
Monica
Cody
Undercover Cop