Asia Born/DJ Shadow and the Groove Robbers - "Send Them" b/w "Entropy" (Solesides, 1993)
Latyrx’s
The Second Album is due out on
Tuesday. Their first album, appropriately titled Latyrx (The Album), came out a long sixteen years ago, and that
length of time apart has caused expectations to rise to unmatchable levels. The Second Album will almost certainly
disappoint simply because the memory of the first is so overpowering that it
makes considering the second on its own merits an almost impossible task. I’m
going to make things even harder for myself by taking the time to focus on
Latyrx’s early years over the next few days.
First
up is “Send Them” the debut single by one half of Latyrx, Asia Born, and the
first release on the amazing Solesides label. Solesides, which later morphed
into the Quannum Projects, was a rap collective and label that was founded in
1992 around UC Davis and the Bay Area. In many ways the weirder cousin of
fellow Bay Area crew Hieroglyphics, Solesides initially comprised of
Blackalicious members Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel, DJ Shadow, and Latyrx members
Lateef the Truthspeaker and Lyrics Born.[1] These
five used Solesides as the mouthpiece for much of their experimentation and
general weirdness, finding their own unique voices in the process.
“Send
Them” is a raggedy tune built on a sample of Billy Miles’ “Memphis Train” from
his 1970 album Them Changes. The beat
is decidedly low-rent, and much of it is a fun mix of cowbell, a wordless vocal
sample, and a four-note bassline, with occasional changes and brief additions
of horns and guitar stabs. Contrary to popular belief, DJ Shadow did not make the
beat to “Send Them”; rather, it was produced by Asia Born himself, and his
amateurism shows. Fortunately, that same amateurishness is one of the song’s
most appealing qualities. Both the beat and the vocals (especially the vocals)
sound like the work of someone who never learned the rules of hip-hop so he had
to just make up his own as he went. On the lyrical tip, Asia Born is defiantly
underground in both focus and ambition, and his rubbery flow and scratchy voice
make for an enduring combination. “Send Them” is far from his best work (that
would come on Latyrx (The Album) and
on his first solo album Later That Day
from 2003), but it’s an exciting debut and engaging curiosity from a regional
movement that was just getting started.
The
a-side closes out with “Count and Estimate (Dub),” an instrumental remix of the
Gift of Gab-featuring DJ Shadow and the Groove Robbers cut on the b-side. The song
isn’t much of a dub (the beat is pretty much identical to the vocal version),
but the occasional echoed snatches of Gift of Gab lines are a nice touch. But it
is ultimately just an appetizer for the b-side “Entropy.” Billed as a ‘Hip Hop
Reconstruction from the Ground Up,’ “Entropy” is a nearly eighteen minute
six-part suite credited to DJ Shadow and the Groove Robbers.[2] It
has several really engaging moments, including Gift of Gab’s first verses on
wax and some drum work that shows how fully formed that aspect of his Endtroducing… sound was three years
before that album came out. Yet compared to the What Does Your Soul Look Like? EP, which came out a year after “Entropy,”
it’s clear that Shadow was still grasping at the sound he would find on that EP
and then perfect two years later on his first album. Still, “Entropy” is the
best work of his young career up to this point, and it is definitely a
must-have for his fans.
Latyrx (The Album) and Endtroducing… are classics whose shadows both artists have been trying
to escape since they came out.[3] “Send
Them”/”Entropy” shows decisively that the process of developing those trademark
styles was much easier for them than escaping from them has been.
Coming Up on Spray Cans:
Shadowz
in Da Dark
Mystik
Journeymen
L Da
Headtoucha
Big
Twan
Rok
One
Cashless
Society
Black
Attack
Pop Da Brown Hornet
99th Demention
J-Treds
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