Here it is….number one….
1. Deep Puddle Dynamics The Taste of Rain…Why Kneel (1999)
As I mentioned previously, anticon was at the top of their game during this era. This album is, in mine and many other’s opinion, the best of the best that came out of anticon. At the time, the rumor was that this record was produced during a weekend, where the artists locked themselves in a house in Minnesota, ate a heroic amount of psychedelic drugs, and made an album. This was easy to believe, because the record sounds like an acid freak-out to dusty beats. As it turns out, the majority of Taste of Rain was recorded during one week, and the rest during a week exactly a year later (whoa, trippy). As we grow older, we realize that the urban myth of a drug-fueled recording session is not so true. But it is hard to believe that when one actually listens to the album. I’ll put it this way: this album seems to make the most since at 3 AM when driving all night to the next String Cheese Incident show, if that makes any sense.
Taste of Rain was a product of its time and it happened during a time that could never be repeated. As this while white boy hip hop thing was establishing roots, different folks in different cities were establishing sounds and staking claims to identity. Sole, a co-founder of anticon, was holding it down in Maine, while Slug was holding down Minneapolis. Seeing that they were doing some of the same kinds of things, the two artists along with their respective camps cam together to collaborate on a project. Sole brought along fellow anticon label mates alias, dose-one, jel, dj mayonnaise, and moodswing9 (the latter three being producers and beat makers). Slug brought with him Rhymesayers artists dj abilities, ant, and eyedea (who only had a small role in all of this).
The result was an album that reveals a lot about the scene…a kind of state of the union for underground hip hop. The album is no doubt trippy, but also it is beautiful, disturbing, confusing, funny, political, and challenging. It is a wonderful piece of avant-garde, postmodern, performance art. It sounds pretentious, and it kind of is. But that’s no reason to not like it. I hate to sound like this, but this is a record that you just have to get; some people do, some people do not, and that does not make you a bad or unintelligent person. It is for this reason that I very rarely suggest this album to people. If they don’t like it then they think I might be a pretentious prick with awful taste in music. Can’t have that happening. Right? Right? Anyway…
Let’s run through some lyrics:
Slug, from “Where the Wild Things Are”
I got a liter of Knob Creek & bottle of Ether
Got the second Mobb Deep creeping out of the speakers
Would prefer to sit home and drink 'cause it's cheaper
Why you trying to hide the eggs girl, you think that it's Easter?
Got time to kill, got kills to time
Prescription filled, I got pills to climb
Got the firearm ready to rob convenience stores
Got charm baby gonna recruit a team of whores
Got hopes and dreams of no in betweens
(There is this ill noisy breakdown with Sole chanting, then it drops back in; you have to hear it to appreciate it)
I've got hopes and dreams of no in betweens
Good swing keep losing the fall in the green
Good thing most my friends live inside my head
'Cause now I'm never alone, when I lie in bed
Got truth can't recall where I put it
Maybe someone took it, mistook it for value and thought they wanted it
Gone with the wind and the rain all that remains is a subtle taste of sin
laced with grins and astonishment
Don't believe in monsters...I know 'em
Because they dwell in my heart and raise hell in my emotions
If there ever was a reason to live it'd be to die
Now hold still let me wipe the fear out of your eye
Jesus. That is so great. And you really have to hear these songs, if you haven’t. Sonically, they are immense. The “second mobb deep” line is just so haunting when set against the beat that abilities did for the song. Slug kind of stepped outside of himself for this album; he, more than anyone, adopted the vibe of the others involved. He killed it.
Here’s something from alias, off of “Deep Puddle Theme Song”:
light reflecting off soft waves
make it a blurred aspect subject
to ponder the vertical dynamics of further respect
one cannot truly feel the mass between the top and bottom points,
h20 is a symbolism we have chosen to use as an anointment, thoughts are sent,
thinking it skimming it skip in,
dip in my entire action creator and popular inflator
flotation devices are your vices dislocate your elevator,
later you will yearn and pray if the liquid form break from the norm
open wide face up to attempt to, and take particles from the storm
That sounds like he is about to spend the next hours talking to his couch. Now, here is a verse from sole, off of “The Scarecrow Speaks”:
Okay everyone
put away your boyish desires
Your buoyant sighs
Your rolling eyes
Your lust for roll and rock
Your lust for getting rocks off with other follies
All your desires for couch and TV
Pick up a book, pick up a shovel
Put down the gun, throw up the fist
Throw intelligent words in this game of conversation
Try a new arrangement
Dollars and sensibility
Intelligence and ability
Eloquence and nobility
Delicatessens
Treat your girl like you treat your TV
How you should use your headphones
and positive role models
Try staying home
Stop trying to prove
Stop trying to be, stop trying to do
Just be proof, do, and exist
Go to college
Respect your mother
Look out for your little sister
Respect no one except yourself
Treat all others how you expect in return
Exercise intellect
If you're lackin pretend
Call few people enemies and call fewer people friends
Don't do it for the wealth, do it all for the love
Love everything you do, and do nothing halfheartedly
Be what you speak
Man, never speak on what you be
Even if you're lost, front like you got a plan
It aint that hard, but stand if
you're ready to be a man
That’s about as straight forward as it gets on this album. Finally, there is dose-one, the nasally, sort of annoying anticon stalwart. You either love him or hate him, and I fall in between somewhere. It is best in doses. Ha. This is also from “Where the Wild Things Are.” Imagine a woman who has been smoking for fifty years that all of a sudden goes through puberty and can do spoken word poetry real well. That is what dose sounds like.
You, don't know what happens when, (I) close the door
And furniture comes warm, out to greet me, look
Showing with pride, daze, dust
And imaginary hug on non-conscious brush
Things are better now
I adore these, walls as they reveal, supple roots
And vibrant flooring, he's home
Seems to penetrate very fabric of the roof above me
As panels seal (ceiling) seal (ceiling) peels
Back the sky so beautiful with knife
Famous purple clouds and mid-light
Ash black sweeps the character away
A truly awesome, sight
Outside, makes room and weep for it
The amazing thing is with secrets unfolding
Abound, on ground I can only see the light
And thus the moon burns and it tolerates magical got some inspiring
To be or not, join the miraculous now transpiring
That is the, who's flame is it for me to not feed
So my relief becomes my galleon and my plume becomes my bloom
This place has always been an ocean, always been a song
See, it is really hard to believe that these guys weren’t on drugs. It makes absolutely no sense if they weren’t.
So, there you have it. My favorite album of the late 90s early 00s white boy era. Take my rankings for what they are worth. And, do know that this is not meant to be a greatest hip hop albums of all time list either, far from it. Although, a lot of kid’s top 5 of all time lists could look like this. The artists in this sub-genre, without a doubt, appealed to a demographic of suburban, privileged white kids who probably didn’t listen to hip hop until they heard these kinds of artists. In a way, this music was made for these kinds of people. But, again, that is not a reason to shun the music, but it must be recognized. To me, that just makes it better.
If hip hop is a site where we can think about and talk about social issues, then this kind of music offers complex examples of the ways that hip hop interacts with race and class to contribute to the overall dialectic surrounding hip hop. If you are into this kind of thing, then this genre of hip hop is worth exploring.
In the end, this post-Golden Age era (I made that up) of hip hop is really great, and not just for these white artists. This entire era of the underground came of age in the Golden Age, when Public Enemy and Jungle Brothers were on the radio. Out of this we got everything from the Hieroglyphics to Living Legends and Company Flow, and everything in between. It was an awesome era and I am so glad to have been in college in my formative music years during this time. Hip hop just seemed different back then (or was I different back then?). Sometimes I wish I hadn't outgrown it all and it wouldn't have to take the death of eyedea to get me thinking about it all again. But I'm glad it did. Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment