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Monday, July 02, 2007
WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME
Pharoahe Monch
Desire
Universal : 2007
[Buy it]
Pharaohe Monch has a new record. Critics love Pharaohe, maybe because he isn't terrible, and not being terrible counts for alot in rap these days. Moistwork's own hard rimer Brian Howe liked the new record - check out his write-up at fearofawhiteplanet.com.
I won't bother re-covering Brian's tracks. Brian drops crit in ways I am not able or willing. Like Brian, I admire Monch's "durable, booming vernacular" and "showy clusters of tongue-twisting homophones." And like Brian, I'm into the ambitious song Trilogy, which sounds a little like if Outkast travelled back through time to make a neo-soul concept musical about Marvin Gaye. But I gotta disagree big time when it comes to Monch's cover of PE's Welcome To The Terrordome. Brian calls it a "dud" but I can't stop listening to the damn thing. I'll agree that covering Public Enemy is pretty much a pointless exercise. (The only act to take a swing at a PE song and make contact was Tricky, who hit it right out of the park on Black Steel.) And vocally, Monch invokes Jay-Z much more than he does Chuck D - whom he stalks more effectively on the song What It Is. The new Terrordome even employs the kind of sampling that makes Jay-Z so consistently disappointing: horn crescendos looped with a barefaced repeat that wears out any and all original bombast. But for whatever reason, next time I'm driving through the Valley of the Jeep Beats, I'll be bumping this update over the PE original, which was always one of my least favorite tracks on my most favorite albums.Labels: James, rap
posted by James
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