Today’s Sounds: dead prez

One thing dead prez do well is take their time. There are some rappers you love to hear from every year, but more often the ones who saturate the landscape with album after album after album burn out or fade away. And of those, how many were ever really relevant to begin with?

Record:

dead prez Information Age (independent)

 
One thing dead prez do well is take their time. There are some rappers you love to hear from every year, but more often the ones who saturate the landscape with album after album after album burn out or fade away. And of those, how many were ever really relevant to begin with?

Then there are they so-called “political” hip hoppers who, no matter how clever their observations and rhyme schemes, stay so topically in-the-moment that they might as well tweet their lyrics bar by bar. Ironically, digital discourse seems to be putting them out of business, too. Why should I care if some armchair rebel writes a banger about “binders full of women” or something? The shelf life on that idea was up so long ago that it’s already a dated reference even for a record review.

These realities create a perfect storm for a pair of rap veterans to enter the Information Age. They have not been silent during the eight years since their sophomore studio record, RBG. Mixtapes and solo side offerings since their 2000 jumpoff, Let’s Get Free, have traditionally taken time to seep into the musical consciousness of hip hop and its fans, and it is not uncommon to hear people discussing a dead prez release three or four entire years after the fact way more reverently than they may have the day it dropped.

M-1 and stic.man don’t come bum-rushin’ 2012 with a collection of slick, inflammatory rhyming rhetoric designed to sway a vote next week and then be forgotten. They do stick to a design that worked well on RBG: driving party beats and quick four-bar trade-offs in place of long, drawn-out soliloquy-esque verses from each MC.

They’ve made it pretty clear since the first instalment of their Turn Off The Radio mixtape series (in a league of its own and among the first in the genre, giving fans some of the shine, without the polish, between studio efforts) that Let’s Get Free, contextually, would not be repeated, and they’ve stuck to their guns.

The audible result of such audacity (which becomes tangible in January, but is available online now) reaches peak levels with Information Age. Without coming off like one-trick ponies or pundits with drum machines, dpz have done well by fans to keep the backbeat bumpin’, the message up front and the white lies exposed.

 

Track:

School of Seven Bells, “Secret Days”

NYC’s School of Seven Bells conjure up the U.K.’s best late ’80s styles: shoegazing and dance music. This is a tune from their new EP, Put Your Sad Down, out on Vagrant on Nov. 13.

School Of Seven Bells – Secret Days by Vagrant Records

 

Video:

The Luyas, “Montuno”

Having recently watched the U.S. remake of The Ring again, this epic video directed by Mylène Simard had me wondering whether the phone would ring when it was over. But I’d be willing to bet that the Luyas’ sweet vocals and orchestral lilt would ward off any evil little girl that might come calling.

 

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