“aes &

Rappin’ ina
kinder, gentler

Tha DAISY Age dawns; rap hydra rolls heads; hip-
h
b

opping Harris is technically correct; Schoolly D is
lack enough.
*** De La Soul — 3 Feet High
And Rising, PolyGram 1989
This trio of New Yorkers has
single-handedly thrust the world
into the Daisy Age. Mixing retro-
peacenik marketing sensibility
with the spontaneous naivete of a
bunch of pals playing around in

compromising and occasionally
offensive messages. The beat from
the street is pounded out harshly
and hammer-head hard.

Cuts ike Don't Call Me Nigger
and Livin’ In The jungle graphi-
cally define the turf of contem-
porary inner-city America. This

nation

doesn’t exist simply to move
club-crawling feet. Rather, what
one gets is a broadsiding in-yo-
face-mo-fo diatribe on poverty and
racism.

But the downside surfaces when
Schoolly talks sex. Just as there is
no place in this world for bat-
wielding whities mouthing ‘‘nig-
ger’, so too, there should be no
room for misogynist drivel like
Pussy Ain’t Nothin’.

25 - Wednesday, November 1, 1989 - North Shore News

P.A. PASEMASTER Mase, Trugoy The Dove and Posdnuss
dodge lawn potholes to transmit a real cool ghetto thang
live from Mars. De La Soul is de ia hot.

the recording studio has paid off in brand of rap doesn‘t boast and

a big way for De La Soul. This
debut is one of the year's hottest
selling rap releases.

3 Feet High And Rising pulls rap
in another direction altogether.

MICHAEL
BECKER

record review

Heavy thoughts and bottom-heavy
sonics are kept to a minimum. The
rhyming and rhythm and sampling
are there, but it is rhyming and
rhythm and sampling for a kinder,
gentler era, The ingenious format
of the album — it’s set within the
context of a TV game show —
adds a tongue-in-cheek framing
device to the otherwise loose pro-
ceedings.

*** Various Artists —- Now, Rap’s
What i Call Music! Vol. 2,
Polydor 1989

One year beyond volume one
shows rap an expanding and
evolving force in the pop music
field. Like some multi-headed
hydra, rap is free to feed upon
every musical form that has come
before it and, by sheer power of
informed eclecticism, make it fresh
again.

Sampling, scratching and a
moronically simple beat continue
to provide the fundamentals of the
form. But as this compilation
shows, rap’s stretching out. Dou-
ble Trouble And The Rebel MC’s
just Keep Rockin’ offers a heady
melding of hip hop and ska
rhythms. New York rap radio D.J.
Chuck Chillout And Kool Chip’s
Rhythm Is The Master appropriates
a key snippet from the Talking
Heads’ Once In A Lifetime and
beats it into a brilliant bit of rap.
Gospel ineets hyper-rap fora
soulfully satisfying sound serving
on Rob Base & D.J. E-Z Rock’s joy
And Pain (World To World
Remix).

Pump it up. Rap is where it’s at,
Jack.

**** Simon Harris — Bass,
FFRR Records 1989

The U.K. hip-hop production
wunderkind breaks out a state of
the art collection of some of his
many past projects.

The Harris approach to the
genre is to play up to the clubland
beat and play down the role of rap
as a freedom forum for African
American socio-political concerns.

Harris’ technically deft mix-
master touch combined with some
sensual vocals from Lonnie Gor-
don on {I've Got Your) Pleasure
Control and Levi Newman on
Feel, provide some sweaty over-
the-top highlights. The ubiquitous
Harris trademark cut, Bass (How
Low Can You Go), suriaces this
time around as the Bomb The
House Mix to pen up two im-
mensely decadent sides of fun.

** Schoolly D — Am] Black
Enough For You?, BMG 1989

Rap doesn’t come any asphalt
grittier. Schoolly GB. Weaver fr.)
pully out the stops to bhist honkies
and hore boys atke with an

%

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TO SUN., NOV. 5

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