It’s funny, I was talkin’ to this broad I kinda liked a few years ago. She hated hip-hop (or “rap” as she called it), and I said I liked the point where hip-hop met electronica. She seemed to give me some credit for this, and at the time it was almost just kind of an ephemeral ideal in my mind, more so than anything realized, and then boom, later that year, Drake released the whip-crackingly excellent and hip Take Care, which I’ve been slow getting into, and now we have Yeezus. Safe to say Sasha Frere-Jones can stuff it… hip-hop isn’t dead, it’s just been morphed and fermented, and has emerged stronger than ever, where now finesse is more of an imperative, thereby strengthening the genre, and with this finesse, effective storytelling is paramount. {1}
Of course, sometimes it’s storytelling, and sometimes it’s just saying whatever the hell comes to your (dirty) mind (“Eatin’ Asian pu**y all I need is sweet and sour sauce.”) Not your typical conscious hip-hop, but the ladies do tend to put us all in a better mood. And this album has better sampling than Twisted Fantasy had (I actually just don’t feel like looking up that entire album title), specifically the post-song interlude following “New Slaves,” and the last track, “Bound 2.”
God, I barely even remember my point here, oh yeah, the fusion of hip-hop and electronica. Man, I hope Autechre doesn’t start brandishing gats against A$ap Rocky. Or at least I hope Mr. Rocky does a Peel Session before this happens. Anyway, happy bouncin’.
{1}: Give Das Racist credit, who have themselves spoken out against the Frere-Jones statement made in 2009 (the year of Doom’s excellent Born Like This) that hip-hop was dead. The unfortunately now defunct group of brown b-boys were definitely one of the pathfinders of this long-awaited and awesomely thirst-quenching genre fusion.