London-based The Herbaliser, aka DJ Teeba and Bassist Jake Wherry, have been churning out jazz, funk, trip-hop, ambient breakbeat, spy-fi, and hip-hop inflected tracks since the early 1990s, both as a duo and as a multi-piece live band. While their material is instrumentally rather than lyrically/vocally driven, they infuse their grooves with healthy amounts of ambient vocal snippets and vocal samples, as well as a fair amount of featured artists, usually of the hip-hop vocal variety.
Among their most-recurring guest MCs is The Artist Formerly Known as What? What?, Jean Grae. Grae, née Tsidi Ibrahim in Capetown, South Africa to two South African jazz musicians, grew up in New York City and began her rap career in the mid-1990s as a teen, performing with such acts as the now defunct Ground Zero and Natural Resource.
Teeba and Wherry cast the then What? What? in a number of tracks for their sophomore LP on the soon-to-become venerable trip-hop/electronica label Ninja Tune, 1997's 'Blow Your Headphones.' She went on to contribute tracks to three more Herbaliser LP's, 1999's 'Very Mercenary' (as What? What?), on 2005's 'Take London' (as Jean Grae, MC'ing on no less than seven tracks!), and 2008's 'Same As it Never Was.'
At the time of her collaborations on 'Blow Your Headphones,' What? What? was barely 20 years old, yet she had already developed an impressive flow and a total command of her wildly creative lyrical wordplay.
'The Blend' is backed by cinematic, Ennio Morricone-esque bursts of sound, a perpetual, hypnotic bell-ringing, lots of scratching, and exudes a dark, moody vibe. It's juxtaposed against What? What?'s smooth, syncopated rhymes which are infused with lots of humor, as she pays homage to her NYC upbringing, her recent past in Natural Resource, and her unique MC skillz:
And because the video edit runs short by about a minute, I've also attached an audio clip of the original LP track.
The Blend
'One of the Three, the Natural R-E
To the Source of the B-L-E-N-D
City to City (State to State)
Borough to Borough
NYC to Worldwide Rock Thorough...
See, Me and Rhymes Are Like:
Tooth to Picks
Sides to Kicks
Chops to Sticks
Seas to Sicks
Hard to Bricks
Chest to Vicks
Corruption to Politics
Sticks to Stones
Stones to Sticks
Not Opposites Flips
Cheese to Cakes
Beef to Steaks
Bones to Breaks
Decks to Tapes
Good Food to Plates
Movies to Dates
Cities to States
Odes to Papes
Shakin' MCs Off Their Mics Like Earth to Quakes...'
'New + Improved' brings more of the same sound, this time punctuated by a catchy stand-up bassline, and crisp drumming with hi-hat cymbal squeezes that seem to spit steam!
New + Improved
'I'm Jumpin' All Over This Track Like a Trampoline
You Can Call Me the Master of Seen and Unseen
I'm Like a Glad-Lock Zip, Making MCs Turn Green
And Ever Since the Age of Seven, Was A Hip-Hop Fiend
Sendin' a Shout To the Bad Seed, My Man DuPreen
Representin' the Diamond District All the Way From Queens
Woulda Finished Up the Album but I Bough A Playstation
Now We Sit For Hours, For MCs an Education
I Release Stress With My Ball-Point Pen
Representin' for the League, 7 Women, 2 Men
Cuz We Got 9 Players on the T.E.A.M.
Not Players in the Sense That We Sip Cristal
Just Like to Bounce on Funky Tracks With the Lyrical Style
From the Field to the Studio the Game Stays On
From the Present to Infinity My Vocals Stay Strong...'
No comments:
Post a Comment