RJD2
w/Diverse, the Saturday Nights
Fri May 21, Chop Suey, 9 pm, $12 adv.
RJD2's new record, Since We Last Spoke, challenges what hiphop means in 2004. Does it refer to a tempo? If so, Since We... bumps and breaks at the appropriate 90 beats per minute. If it's lifestyle, RJ's not a street hustler, but he certainly comes with the right credentials, having produced beats for rappers Cannibal Ox, Aceyalone, and Blueprint, and running with independent hiphop's crew of the moment, Def Jux. If it's more about musical references, soul, dub, and funk breaks are all over this album--and RJ's a deep crate digger.
Mostly, though, hiphop's an attitude--in which case Since We Last Spoke reminds me of anything but hiphop. MCs don't cloud the beats' insistent thump with in-your-face identity politics. The music isn't hard-edged, urban, or glossy; it doesn't demand your attention with sharp technoid claps or jarring bass. It mostly insinuates subtly, calling with a siren song of soul horns or muted vocals. To top it off, tracks like "Making Days Longer" and "Through the Walls" are nearly rock affairs. The former finds RJ pining away (in a Postal Service vein) over post-rock drums and synth squiggles, while the latter is so rife with classic rock guitars and drum fills it's almost a modern update of the Cars.
RJD2 produced the entire record himself, often redoing samples when he couldn't get an exact sound out of a source. "At the end of the day, I can look back and say this record was all me," he says, on the phone from his house in Philly. "For better or for worse, this is the best I could do."
Since We Last Spoke may be RJD2's most personal effort to date, but is it the most evocative of his style? Well, like a typical Gemini, RJ is divided about whether or not having a signature sound is even actually a good thing.
"There are these major-label [hiphop producers] who always have a space noise or some little thing that they do [in their tracks], and I swear to god they're just doing it to brand themselves," he says. "It's like any idiot could have made the horns and the drums [on the tune] but you hear the little space noise and then you know it's theirs. [My favorite producers] take it to such an extreme that they want to have their shit camouflaged, where they're constantly changing. I take that shit to such an extreme that I don't ever want to have recognizable sounds."
It's true that Since We Last Spoke doesn't have many recognizable sounds, but it does have recognizable sentiments. It's mostly filled with nostalgic numbers--both up-tempo and melancholy--which fragment Americana from the last 40 years and filter it through an MPC 2000. In fact, it's hard to write about without comparing it to DJ Shadow's genre-defining Endtroducing, as RJ and Shadow share the same pensive undercurrent and fondness for old funk and soul. But RJ's sound is more layered and spacy, with various sonic elements--fuzzy guitars, oddly-effected vocal snippets, dubby horns--popping out to catch your attention before sinking back into the mix.
RJ says that, paradoxically, he had to simplify things before he made them more complex. "Once I found out what went into [making rap music] I realized that a lot of it was really, really simple," he explains. "And now there are points in [the production process] where I sit down and say, 'I need something with just the same loop through the whole song, where people aren't thinking about the production and all the shit that's going on.' Sometimes I want to shoot for something that's kind of boring, if you will, to give the other things on the record a sense of contour."
But don't let RJ's attention to album detail put you off his live show--he's working hard to make sure it's accessible to those outside strict hiphop appreciation circles. "I don't want people to be bored," he explains. "I want to make my show interesting and intricate and as involved as the record is, but I don't want it to sound just like the record. I will have some interactive things and visuals so people can see what's going on, and alternate versions of songs.
"I mean, it's a night out..." he concludes, trailing off. "I don't want to make beanbag Vicodin music."
