Boston's white rapper Edan (Portnoy), raised as a rock guitarist, debuted with Primitive Plus (2000, re-released professionally two years later) a post-modern take on and tribute to
old-school hip-hop via contaminations with psychedelic soul and the electronic avantgarde.
The brilliant and bizarre production pares the
confrontational tone of Run That Shit (over jazzy lounge piano) and One Man Arsenal (over bombastic beats and scratching)
with
the rapid-fire chipmunk-shrill tribute to hip-hop pioneers Ultra '88
and
Number One Hit Record, an amusing Kool Keith impression.
More extreme are
the robotic electronic vignette '83 Wildin' or
Humble Magnificent over an amputated swing beat,
Sing It Shitface, which is a collage of classical orchestra, folk violin and Chinese nursery rhyme,
the sleepy jazzy instrumental A.E.O.C. For Meditation,
and Key Bored, one minute of dementia over Mozart's "Rondo' Alla Turca".
The swinging Mic Manupilator and the swirling and disorienting Primitive Plus are the intellectual counterparts to
the exuberant but clownish industrial music Rapperfection
and to the
cartoonish, Zappa-esque and dissonant You Suck, a duet with a mysterious rapper named Father Time (the two highlights).
By taking the method more seriously, he then fused acid-rock and hip-hop on
Beauty And The Beat (2005),
the same way Sly Stone fused acid-rock and funk music four decades earlier.
The variety is impressive: there are hardly two songs that sound like they belong to the same album.
The electronic sounds of Polite Meeting and especially Making Planets are
psychedelically warped, spaced-out and videogame-inspired.
Smile dwells at the border between acid-rock and industrial music but ends with a simple folkish tune.
The electronic arrangement of Torture Chamber are almost gothic and
(even better) The Science Of The Two drowns in a swamp of otherworldly electronic sounds.
If Funky Voltron is a cacophony of 1970s funk music,
Rock And Roll (another highlight) embraces loud and distorted Blue Cheer-style guitar,
and Murder Mystery skids into noir jazz.
I See Colours contrasts rapping with a celestial choir, and
Promised Land even toys with an anthemic orchestral motif.
Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme is another (frenzied) tribute to pioneers.
The stylistic range is overwhelming.
The 29-minute Echo Party (2009) is a meticulous mash-up suite that uses old-school hip-hop tunes as its building blocks and adds live instrumentation
to provide psychedelic overtones.
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