Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth - The Main Ingredient (Elektra, 1994)


Hip-hop. It's a noticeably touchy subject for extreme music geeks. Hip-hop heads tend to exist separately from your typical KiC-affiliated music obsessive. The only reason I can think of is the tendency for MCs to focus on the superficial. Bragging about how dope you are, or how much money you have, or how fucked up it is in dilapidated inner-city America, or being casually misogynistic isn't something our typically introverted heads have an easy time relating to. I'm not going to sit in my comfortable home, listening to Brotzmann or something similar and think, "I'm the shit."


Maybe that's why for me, the MC is secondary to the producer. My first concern is the quality of the beats and music. That said, it's definitely going to take away from the music if the MC is "whack." That's why Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth are perfect. Pete Rock, along with Madlib, Dilla, and Primo, is one of my absolute favorite producers. Speaking of Dilla (creator of the masterpiece Donuts, my most recent 5-star rating on RYM), Pete Rock was his idol. Apparently Pete Rock showed up during the recording of Fantastic Vol. 2 (by Slum Village, Dilla's original Detroit group) and Dilla had this spinning at the time. He told Pete this about when he was starting out: "I was trying to be you."

C.L. is nearly as great. He makes rapping sound easy. I guess that's why they call him Smooth. His flow is so effortless, it's insane. The closest comparison I can think of is Nas. It's clear that these two were made for each other, the chemistry is that good. Gang Starr has something similar going on, but Guru just isn't on the level that C.L. is.

In terms of production, The Main Ingredient builds on the soulful, jazzy sound of their classic debut, Mecca & The Soul Brother. The sound this time around feels more inspired by Tribe's Midnight Marauders, which came out the year before. It definitely pushes that sound forward. In fact, the first voice you hear on the record is a sample of Q-Tip from one of the first tracks on Midnight Marauders declaring "Pete Rock is in the House." That's part of what I love about hip-hop, when there is a definite inspiration being taken from a specific source, it feels more like a respectful give-and-take than a rip-off (which is especially impressive seeing as when you get down to it, sampling is the most direct no-bullshit way to rip something off). There is such an incredible exchange of ideas and mutual respect among hip-hop artists (it's such a shame that white media only recognizes the "beefs"). In the early nineties this was the reason the genre seemed to be excelling so rapidly. I don't know what happened. That collective-mind seems to have been broken, and now the innovators seem like anomalies. Though it lacks a classic on the level of "T.R.O.Y." The Main Ingredient is overall of a more consistent quality, and I find that much more impressive than a patchy record with a handful of classics on it.

Posted by Alex at 9:38 AM
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5 comments:

ZikPot,  November 24, 2009 7:19 PM  
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ZikPot,  November 24, 2009 7:19 PM  
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Anonymous,  November 25, 2009 4:43 AM  

I've been sleeping on PR & CL for way too long. I've been digging Pete Rock's "Soul Survivor" and I love a lot of the shit he's done on so many albums. I'll download this once my connection stops being awful. Thank you.

P.S. I need to check out that Slum Village album as well. I've been digging Donuts since it came out but for a while I lost interest in it; however more recently I've been enjoying it a lot. Jaylib is real nice too.

rmf919,  November 25, 2009 12:29 PM  

Nice post. I've been getting more into Pete Rock lately. He's one of my favorite boom bap producers. Love how he layers his beats and filters samples. His beats have a vinyl-esque quality about them. Good stuff.

Anonymous,  November 30, 2009 3:18 PM  

PR and Primo for president

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MILES DAVIS


By 1973, Miles had gone crazy. I often ask myself, in reference to an athlete lost to excess, or an artist that has burned too brightly, does the caring person in me have the ability to bring myself, should I somehow be granted such powers, to erase great works of art by curing the illness that brought them to be? Here, the case is simple: would I be humane enough to let Miles free of his demons, knowing that doing so would erase all the art he made in the midst of his madness?

If I were alive and asked this in 1975, I would certainly say yes. The music in question was largely, perhaps near-unanimously, reviled by critics. Miles, his health shattered, had just retired for what was to be five years. Dave Liebman was solid, but was also one of very few longstanding sax players to pair with Miles without subsequently gaining worldwide fame (I'm still waiting on a Gary Bartz revival - I'll lead the way). Miles had unleashed masterpieces like On the Corner, Get Up With It, and garnered neither the younger black audience he wanted, nor the sales of his prior albums (namely, Bitches Brew).

However, time has a way of changing things. Miles' work from this period has seen a decade-long critical resuscitation, the dry clicks and repetition of On the Corner a false ancestor of dubstep, the pulsing ambiance of "He Loved Him Madly" was ahead of Eno, ahead of dark jazz, and ahead of about ten other genres. Miles was more mournful in his playing, the searcher was more lost than ever, and his body matched his tone: brittle, thin, static then frenetic (could be the coke there). Given all this, I don't know if I could let Miles go if that meant this art would go away. Whatever was chasing miles over a quarter-century ago, it lead him into areas so far ahead of his time, it is staggering.

EXCEPTIONAL NEW RELEASE

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Your Snakelilke King, by the duo of Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance under the name Blood Stereo, was a steady climber throughout the year for me. The first thing that caught me, as is often the case, is the stunning cover art, which, luckily for them and for me, came to my attention when I was deeply into dance a while earlier in the year. I also had wanted to check something out by Dylan Nyoukis, as I'd heard his name bandied about by some other writers that I trust, but was kind of put off by the album with the cover of him naked.

Enter Your Snakelilke King. The second track, "The Taking of the Tonic," is what originally caught my ear, as it started off with the sort of high pitched, spare vocal spikes that would be common on a Keiji Haino record. After that portion, there are layered vocals, scratching textures, and a sort of propelled development through the rest of the track that simultaneously has a circular motion to it, a sort of swirling vortex in the speaker array. In a way, the vocals mimic something from Burning Star Core's more saliva-based excursions, which is a good thing.

After I was thoroughly taken by the second track, I gave the opener, "The Giving of the Grape," a more attentive listen. The track starts very similar to Tony Conrads Joan of Arc, so much so that at first I wondered if the track was realized by recording the pedals and keys of an instrument. This descends into the chaos of the remainder of the track, replete with violin scratches, frenzies and abutted by synthetic tones, closely recorded bubbling and crackling. The 20-minute journey can't be summed up completely here, but the message I hope you get is that this record is effective in track development, all the while being texturally complex and dynamic. In short, Your Snakelilke King, sold out in the 330 copy vinyl edition, but still available in other formats on Pan, serves as a perfect entry point to Nyoukis and Constance, and is a fantastic "noise" record, period.

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