(02.10.04) For those who, like me, missed out on the near-legendary DJ Cries Medic 12″ the Shadow Huntaz released back in 2000, that record has a reputation for setting the bar for the crossover between post-techno electronics and hip-hop. This is the follow up album, with the same 3 MCs working with Dutch duo Funckarma. I have to admit I didn’t approach the album with high hopes. What I love most in hip-hop is funky beats and energetic, witty flows. There’s a lot of worthy hip-hop trying to push boundaries, but most of the time I’m happier listening to Wu-Tang or chart raps.
I’m happy to say this album is damn fine. The production sounds unlike any hip-hop album you’ll have heard, but for the most part the Funckarma boys stick to the basic precepts of the genre: set a solid foundation that sounds great up loud, over which the MCs can do what they do best. Where the beats are blown apart, the MCs step back, the digital shards taking over the role of the DJ in more traditional hip-hop. The MCs themselves are surprisingly trad, but this is to their advantage. They just sound like they love spitting rhymes, not painstakingly sweating over poems and then trying to figure out some way to stick them on top of a beat.
Opening track “CDC” sets the stage brilliantly with a big, simple beat and loud horn-like stabs, like some tweaked take on a DJ Premier cut. As the MCs let loose, all bravado and toughness, the horns collapse to be replaced by the kind of gurgling chords and industrial hum more common to an Autechre track but the beats keep rolling.
Where the raps have been obviously messed with, it never interferes with the flow, such as the subtle slurs and stuttering of “Nite” or the more chaotic styles of “Roar.” In the latter each MC’s verse is thrown through the digital blender in lieu of a chorus, stammering and jabbering away from reality before the arrival of the next lyric.
If I have one criticism of Corrupt Data it’s that the sheer amount of stuff happening in some tracks can be a bit wearying on the old ears. Mechanistic atmospheres, digitized scratching and layers of percussion can get a bit much, as can the number of changes in the instrumentation. Tracks like “Fukwit 2,” with its well-placed pauses between beats, and “Trenches” with its bouncing bass and shimmering synths, come as a great relief.
All of the tracks presented here are excellent and the album is a resounding success. The irony is that it succeeds over a lot of “progressive” or “left field” releases by not trying too hard. The chorus of the mighty “Nite” says it all: “I live for hip-hop / I’ll die for nothing / I’m never leaving.”
Corrupt Data is out now on Skam.
