Posted on 07/26/2005

 

Hip hop's blending into other genres used to be a cause to cringe; we've survived Fred Durst trying to rhyme, wacktacular scratching over a trip-hop landscape, ill-fated college rock and hip hop collabs (remember R.E.M & KRS-1 together?), but finally, we're starting to see some mind-melds that actually work. Apsci (that's for Applied Science: thus ends your lesson for today) manages to make glitchy yet funky laptop beats as a foundation for some solid (if not spectacular) rhyme escapades and a female vocalist whose blowtorch singing practically steals every track she's on.

It's not all fun and games from the get though. The lead track "Tirade Highway" demonstrates the pitfalls of experimentation, dumping listeners into the cold water of hyperactive electro beats, abstract lyrics that name check Papa Smurf, and Dana Diaz-Tutaan's trying to show her entire vocal range within 30 seconds, from a wailing chorus to near-rapped and terribly affected lines. Fortunately the album manages to rein in its more overreaching impulses without sacrificing any of its expansive nature.

Dana Diaz-Tutaan, for instance, is not your typical torch singer, as you might note when you hear her trading vocal duties with TV on the Radio's Tunde and talking about conspirators "talking out [their] ass". Just to get the Portishead comparison out of the way: no. The organ and tremulous violin on "Cherubic" gets close but the beat's just too blippy and Diaz-Tutaan's vocals track the beat through every staccato peak and valley rather than riding smoothly over its terrain. She even manages to keep her shine in the face of a cameo from Mr. Lif (one of the best pinch hitters out there), soaring to positively operatic heights over a guttural beat with live drums, which all the better accentuates Lif's nimble lyrics and Diaz-Tutaan's vocal altitude.

Raphael LaMotta works the boards with aplomb, though his duties on the mic are less successful. He favors suggestive wordplay, and his output works as a sort of methodical counterpart to Ghostface's abstract flights of imagination. It can work in spots, like on "Anais and Godzilla" which has LaMotta reworking a Jeru the Damaja line; between scratching grandfather clock chimes and Godzilla's roar, the track should make even purist hip-hop heads' day. Somewhat more puzzling is borrowing a Public Enemy couplet for a hook on "Robosex"; maybe Chuck D. isn't so sacrosanct as I'd imagine, but it all smacks of haphazard rhyme choices (maybe I'll still smarting from Tricky's cover of "Black Steel" all those years ago).

Then again, this is hip hop, but it's not. Musically the album melds influences from decades past, with electro underpinnings, classical rhyme schemes, and vocalizing that touches on more than a few planes of existence. It's a heady album. But beneath the bombast, the lyrical content won't make you sit up and think at night. Its semantics are suggestive, and for some looking to sink into the artistry of the music, that will be sufficient. On a strictly lyrical basis the album amounts to enjoyable but empty calories - then again sugar sprinkles wouldn't seem to add much, but I won't have a donut without 'em. Enlisting Don Newkirk on a handle of skits (one particular roll call directly ripped from De La) will of course bring to mind 3 Feet High and Rising - Thanks for Asking may not be that revolutionary an album, but Apsci's weather is definitely clever and brings the stormy atmospherics.