#10: MeLo-X & Jesse Boykins III - Zulu Guru
MeLo-X has thus far made his career on acclaimed but
under-the-radar Bandcamp albums, while Jesse Boykins has released a couple of
similarly acclaimed albums on assorted labels over the last few years, but
their first collaborative album Zulu Guru
on the legendary electronic label Ninja Tune is their most high profile and
assured release yet. Both artists have
used their previous projects to hone their respective crafts, and this album of
Afrocentric hip hop soul recalls the best of the Native Tongues and the
Soulquarians. MeLo-X is a great rapper
(“Tribe of Stafa” is probably the best showcase for his rapping on the album),
and like most great rapper/producers he sounds most at home on his own
beats. The ones on Zulu Guru are trademark MeLo-X with their soulful minimalism. Boykins is a great singer, and his breathy
style is a great fit for MeLo’s production.
Boykins contributes to the production as well, bringing a spacey
neo-soul vibe to many of the songs. Zulu
Guru, along with being the title of the album, is the name of their collective,
and all of the guests on the album hail from this group. At the end of the final track “Schwaza,”
there is a spoken word outro in which someone claims that “this is the type of
collective, you gonna look back thirty years from now and be like ‘wow, all
these people existed in one space… this is only chapter one, that’s what’s
crazy.’” The rest of Zulu Guru illustrates that this is not
hubris. If the members of the collective
keep putting out albums this good, they’ll be remembered with the Native
Tongues and the Soulquarians. They’ve
already shown that like those two collectives, they can tie their music to the
vast history of Black music while simultaneously looking toward the future.
"Perfect Blues"
"Black Orpheus"
"Zulu Guru" (feat. Kesed) (This is the best of the interludes on the album, highlighting the spoken word skills of fellow Zulu Guru member Kesed)
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#9: The Congos/Sun Araw/M. Geddes Gengras - Icon Give Thank
If you were to ask me to list my ten favorite reggae albums,
probably seven of them would be dub records.
From the earliest experiments by King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry
though their protégés and successors Prince Jammy, Scientist, and Mad Professor,
and onto the electronic dub and dub/trip hop experiments of the nineties, dub
reggae has been consistently forward thinking.
Icon Give Thank, the
collaboration between legendary roots reggae vocal group The Congos and
psychedelic explorers Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras, is the future of
dub. This is not the tinny digital dub
of years past. Araw and Gengras bring
their ambient psychedelic rock and electronic experience and have created sound
beds that are cavernous and filled with reverb.
The various sounds, including hand drums way low in the mix, electronic
bleeps and bloops, guitars with lots of effects pedals, and rumbling
omnipresent bass, are all heavily reverbed to the point where they sound like
they’re echoing off of each other and turning back in on themselves. Sonic elements drop in and out, making room
for Rasta chants and ghostly falsetto harmonies before returning to crowd the
vocals back out of the mix. If dubstep
is one direction of dub’s inevitable progression, then Icon Give Thank, which sounds like it was made by aliens with a lot
of really high quality weed, will hopefully inspire a legion of likeminded
artists who will forge an alternate path into dub’s future.
"Jungle"
"Invocation"
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#8: Killer Mike & El-P - R.A.P. Music
The comparisons between ATLien Killer Mike enlisting
Brooklyn’s El-P to produce his newest album and Ice Cube reaching across the
east coast/west coast divide to work with the Bomb Squad on his debut solo
album AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted have
become cliché in the months since R.A.P.
Music came out in May, but it is a particularly useful cliché. The Bomb Squad has been an important
influence of El-P’s ever since he began abandoning the minimalist style of the
first Company Flow album. Killer Mike is
a social/political gangsta rapper in the mold of Ice Cube, and on R.A.P. Music, the best album of his
career by a wide margin, he reaches his idol’s level. Opener “Big Beast,” featuring standout verses
from Southern rap titans Bun B and T.I., is the kind of chest thumping banger
that Ice Cube seemed to make effortlessly from his days in N.W.A. through his
third solo album. “Untitled” is a less
fiery affair, but he still gets out lines like “I don’t trust the church or the
government/Democrat, Republican/Pope or a bishop or them other men/And I
believe God has sustained me with rap/So I pick a burning bush, put it in a
Swisher rap.” He also compares himself
to Slick Rick in that song and backs that comparison up with “JoJo’s Chillin”
and “Don’t Die,” which is the best killing corrupt cops rap fantasy in twenty
years. “Reagan” is the album’s
centerpiece and best song, and is one of the most thoughtful and insightful
political hip hop songs since Mr. Lif’s “Brothaz.” Despite making his debut on OutKast’s
critical and commercial smash Stankonia
in 2000 and being featured prominently on their huge hit “The Whole World” the
next year, Killer Mike’s solo career never lived up to his promise, and he
seemed destined for footnote status. R.A.P. Music is the album that changes
that, and it has turned him into one of the best rappers out today.
"Reagan"
"Untitled"
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#7: Ab-Soul - Control System
Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q might get more attention, but
Ab-Soul is my favorite member of the Black Hippy crew, and that’s almost
entirely the result of this album (sorry Jay Rock, you completely overpower
most other rappers with your guest verses, but you need to release an album on
the level of what the other three Black Hippies did in 2012). Ab-Soul has the most versatile subject matter
out of the whole crew, rapping equally effectively about politics, depression,
drugs, hoes, wack rappers, his third eye, and the death of his girlfriend and
collaborator Alori Joh. That subject
matter is all over the place, and it would be easy for a rapper to lack a
coherent identity by stretching himself that thin. Not so for Ab-Soul, who aptly describes
himself by imploring the listener to "Just imagine if Einstein got high and
sipped juice/Broke rules, got pussy, beat up rookies on Pro Tools," on
“Track Two.” The album’s best song is “The
Book of Soul,” the album’s penultimate track, which begins with the lines “Your
momma told me read the Book of Job/They shoulda called it the Book of Soul,”
and continues on for five heartbreaking minutes about contracting
Stevens-Johnson Syndrome as a kid and about meeting and falling in love with
Alori Joh and her eventual suicide in February of this year. Near the end of the song, he says “Everything
I love gets taken away from me, my momma and music is next/And if that happens
before I turn 28/Then I’m going out with Kurt Cobain.” Tellingly, he follows this up with “Black Lip
Bastard (Remix)” featuring fiery verses from all four of the Black
Hippies. Ab-Soul’s verse is the second
best of the bunch (Jay Rock has the longest verse and completely owns the song.
He really needs to hurry up and put out
another album), calling out wack rappers who spend too much time eating yogurt in bed. He'll be making music very successfully for a
long time.
"Terrorist Threats" (feat. Danny Brown & Jhene Aiko)
"The Book of Soul"
"Black Lip Bastard (Black Hippy Remix)"
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#6: Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream
Major label R&B has been kind of a wasteland for a long
time. There have been bright spots (FutreSex/LoveSounds being one of the
standouts from the last decade), but 2012 seems to have marked a sea change in
the kind of freedoms major labels allow some of their artists. Frank Ocean has been the most visible example
of this trend, and he had to release his first record for free behind the back
of his label, and foster acclaim and attention to get that leverage. Miguel went a different route. He made a decent album, All I Want is You, which Jive underpromoted after steering the
direction of the album, but the second single “Sure Thing,” was successful
enough that he was able to get a much greater degree of creative control for
his follow-up Kaleidoscope Dream. Try to imagine what “Sexual Healing”-era
Marvin Gaye would have sounded like if he projected more insecurity in his
lyrics and his music was more psychedelic and you won’t be far off from Kaleidoscope Dream. There are no guest rappers and the album
doesn’t have beats from any of the hot producers who are popular this week. Instead, Miguel is able to air out his
insecurities and project his being onto a gorgeous soundscape that is far from
the pop R&B template of the day.
"Don't Look Back"
"Kaleidoscope Dream"
