This man is currently one of the best, yet one of the most underrated beatsmiths doing it. He dropped an amazingly dope album White Van Music last year on Rhymesayers Entertainment and has an upcoming album in the works with Freeway (that shit is gonna knock!!!!!). He has the great ability to produce for all types of artists. These are some of my favorites…

De La Soul – “Rock Co.Kane Flow”

• De La Soul – Rock Co.Kane Flow

This is that shit! From one of the most criminally slept on albums of the last 10 years, De La’s 2004 The Grind Date, this song pulsates with the weird brilliance that both De La and guest MF Doom have made careers of. But the star of the song is Jake’s production.

Freeway – “Blauh”

• Freeway – Blauh

Everyday last December the “Philly Freezer” murdered a beat in his Month of Madness series and the chemistry these two developed on this, and another song, led the way to the collaborative album I mentioned earlier. I don’t know if this was made for Free, but it fits perfectly. Set the tone and let him go.

The Gift of Gab – “Rat Race”

• The Gift of Gab – Rat Race

To many people have never heard this song, or even the 2004 Gift of Gab album Fourth Dimensional Rocketships Going Up, for that matter. So have a listen.

Freeway & Brother Ali – “The Truth”

• Jake One – The Truth

Freeway and Ali over some rock-hard Jake One production!!! This song will still be as dope 30 years from now as it is right now as it’s being played. This is hip hop – simple, straight forward and infinitely better than anything you ever thought of doing. Off of the 2008 Jake One album White Van Music.

Prodigy – “Shed Thy Blood”

• Prodigy – Shed Thy Blood (w/ Un Pacino)

I’m a lyrics guy, but sometimes a beat completely makes up for lackluster rhyming. Case in point, this song from the 2008 album Product Of The 80′s. Seriously, turn this one up.

]]> http://jointcontrast.com/2009/07/the-jukebox-%e2%80%93-produced-by-jake-one/feed/ 1 http://jointcontrast.com/2009/03/how-i-learned-to-accept-musicians-for-the-people-their-retarded-fans-think-they-are/ http://jointcontrast.com/2009/03/how-i-learned-to-accept-musicians-for-the-people-their-retarded-fans-think-they-are/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:11:16 +0000 JC http://jointcontrast.com/?p=843 By – TimS

I’ve tried to get this review started five times now, but I just don’t know how to introduce the fact that Brother Ali is fucking ridiculously talented. Or to find a way to talk about his recently released EP The Truth Is Here without sounding like a Rhymesayers Stan (my previous P.O.S. post doesn’t help). And believe me, there are plenty of Stan’s out there.

Find a white girl (or Dank Lucas) that listens to independent hip-hop and you’ll probably find somebody deeply rooted in the church of Slug (of Atmosphere). Now of course true heads (yes, Dank is included in this category as well) can connect Slug’s lineage to some of the greatest that have ever done it, as well as some of the most promising today. But there is that little pocket of fans that have no idea (or even the ability to recognize) the brilliance that is being made today (or that was made before they saw Atmosphere on MTV) in hip-hop. That makes me a little bitter.

It’s not the fact that Slug is the face of indie-rap (I wouldn’t mind if he was the face of rap all together), it’s just that somebody that listens to Asher Roth probably has an Atmosphere t-shirt. Quite a few Atmosphere fans probably don’t even own any other hip-hop records. So while Slug is guilty by association to his fans, his labelmates and the genre as a whole are often guilty by association through him.

Pretty fucking ridiculous, right? Well I’m a cynical neurotic asshole who chooses to have as little contact with human beings as possible, so on a daily basis I must protect myself from perpetuating the things I hate about them. And today’s topic just so happens to be hip-hop. So as I sing my praises for a particular piece of hip-hop, I must battle the urge to stab myself in the chest when I think that some hipster-herbtastic-fringe fan likes the same music as me.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Can it be all so simple? Inside my brain, no. Even when I enjoy something, I don’t fully enjoy it. But Brother Ali’s music is something that comes close to being fully enjoyed.

Other than Pharoahe Monch, nobody’s rhyme patterns even come close to Ali’s. While Monch is jagged with his delivery, Ali manages to deliver complex syllable groupings with unparalleled fluidity. His voice is as authoritative as we’ve heard in the last decade and his subject matter ranges from the personal to the political, from battle rhymes to pick-up lines. And he does it  all with a sense of humility and graciousness.

The musical backdrop on The Truth Is Here is once again handled by Ant (from Atmosphere, in case you haven’t heard). There is definitely a difference between the beats Ant makes for Slug and the beats he makes for Ali, and in my opinion Ali wins out. The drums hit harder, the samples are broader and the overall feel is more immediate. The exciting thing about this EP is that it might be a true launching pad for Ali. After two borderline classic albums and two amazing EP’s we now await his third full-length release dropping in the fall.

From what Ali has said recently in interviews we can expect outside production this time, and that gets my rap-nerd tentacles (yes, tentacles) perked in excitement. Now, I have the utmost respect for Ant and his production credentials, but for fuck-sakes, did you hear how dope Ali sounds over some Jake One production? I’m not quite sure who the other producers are going to be, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have to worry about the Brother picking any suspect beats.

So I guess in a roundabout way I actually did talk about the album….okay, so I didn’t. But I did get to mention Ali’s dopeness. I also made a quick disparaging remark about that silly little white boy everybody is crazy about at the moment. And I got to compare Dank Lucas to white girls.

And that folks, is good enough for me.

The third full-length album from Minneapolis native P.O.S. falls into the same category as recent releases by El-P and Saul Williams, brilliantly unlistenable.

Let me clarify that by stating how utterly amazing those two releases were by the aforementioned artists, both in production and lyrical content. But you don’t just ride around to The Inevitable Rise & Liberation of Niggy Tardust! by Williams or El-P’s I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead. And they aren’t necessarily Sunday morning records either. But along with P.O.S.’s Never Better they fit perfectly into my favorite musical genre – headphone music.

Only through headphones can such intricate and purposeful music be completely enjoyed.

P.O.S. is one of the rare hybrid artists whose music feels thoroughly authentic. He grew up on punk, hardcore, and hip-hop and he uses all of those musical influences to create a genuine sound that, although it veers, stays deeply rooted in traditional hip-hop. The melodies, the hooks, the lo-fi production are all evidence of his punk past. But what is completely undeniable about this Doomtree and Rhymesayers representative is the fact that he can absolutely rap his fucking ass off. Pick an artist that could ride the beat of Drumroll with such finesse and force.

A smartass with a gift for deft lyricism, P.O.S. doesn’t tread lightly when it comes to subject matter. Social commentary can often be boring if it isn’t treated with the same introspection and selfishness that we view our own reality with, and vice versa. But this album, as with his previous two, is full of perfectly constructed criticisms of life.

The intro song “Let It Rattle” is ideal for that slot on the album. It showcases his raw flow that gains momentum as the song builds while delivering brazen lines like “It’s a goddamn recession/show a little respect you Pfizer babies..” and “They out for presidents to represent them/you think a president could represent you/you really think a president would represent you/yeah right” (like MF Doom’s penchant for flipping cliché phrases, P.O.S. often plays off of famous rap lines to create a sarcastic viewpoint). As the song progresses the beat begins to work to a thunderous roar that you expect to break into a violent surge of drum patterns and sound effects, and in a way it does. But like P.O.S. on a whole, that violent surge you expect he’s building to is met with melody and subtle textures that create a beautiful chaos.

The two most straightforward hip-hop beats appear on “Savion Glover” and “Out of Category”, where the MC first displays his sarcastic lyrical dexterity, then storytelling abilities. Also, the Doomtree posse cut “Low Light Low Life” featuring Sims, Cecil Otter, and my hip-hop crush, Dessa, boasts a rolling horn and drum hook-friendly beat that serves the chemistry between the four MC’s well.

But if you want to know why I truly dig this album then you have to listen to “The Basics”. With a break-neck pace drumbeat and a gut-wrenching stuttered bass line as its foundation, this song sounds so melodic and utterly confusing all at the same time. But the brilliant part is how he neither juxtaposed his flow with the beat nor rhymed completely in synch, but used it as another part of the production instead. Now that’s not a new way of structuring your rhyme pattern, but to do it to this beat truly amazes me. What really sells this song though is its refrain. It epitomizes the ethos of the independent hip-hop scene, or really any independent scene that truly functions self-sufficiently. “We don’t want nothing from no one/we don’t need nothing you’re selling/we don’t see anything moving/we don’t have the time/we just need something to eat/we just need some place to sleep/we need the basics and baby we are gonna be alright”.

True indeed.

If you’re not currently a fan of P.O.S. then I encourage you to give him a try. Try hard though, because that’s what his music demands. Effort. And if it doesn’t work for you, then move on. But if you get it, if you find yourself in the midst of the chaos and you like the way the wind sounds then consider your effort rewarded.