So-called underground hip-hop has gotten big pushes from New York’s Definitive Jux records, the home of DJ and producer RJD2. RJ has done some great work in the past; his remix of “The F-Word” pushed the envelope of Harlem rap act Cannibal Ox’ murky, moody machine funk, while “June” brought heartbreaking guitar to what was possibly Copywrite’s only introspective moment on the mic, ever.
The guy should have quit while he was ahead. In Deadringer, RJD2 has produced an undeveloped fetus of a record that sounds more like the work of a would-be DJ Shadow tribute artist and less like the debut LP of a demonstrably talented man on one of hip-hop’s finest labels. Probably the best thing that can be said about it is that it includes “June.” But that single came out last year.
The record begins with “The Horror,” full of funk horn stabs, wholesale-sampled drums and soul vocals. Kind of sounds like a recipe for a Moby song, doesn’t it? Or maybe a DJ Shadow track? Well, if you like that stuff, Deadringer basically goes on like this. It’s one long exercise in sampling that utterly fails to break the mold so many have followed before. “Good Times Roll Pt. 2” provides one of the record’s few respites?during the bridge, RJ launches into an identically-formatted segment which focuses on a less-thoroughly-rampaged decade: the ‘80s. It makes for an entertaining few bars. But give it another few years and we’ll all be sick of hearing people attempt to remake that material, too.
“Final Frontier” finds RJD2 hanging out with Blueprint, who is doing his best to sound like Pharoe Monche. The only pleasure I received from hearing this track came from having heard the rumor that by day, Blueprint is a systems analyst in Cleveland, Ohio. And he has no friends.
So Deadringer sounds a lot like some guy is basically following whatever rulebook DJ Shadow wrote to help him during the making of his oft-saluted Entroducing. Yay. Hundreds of producers have done it before. And what all these Entroducing lovers forget is that such cut-and-paste tracks are good not because of the producer’s skill, but because the original musicians were incredible. Sure, it usually sounds really cool to sample a 48-bar drum solo which everyone and their mother has heard, and then add a few piano chords. See track 10, “Chicken-Bone Circuit.” But such an exercise does not a great producer make. This is not an argument against sampling; theft or not?well there’s not really a debate, it is theft?sampling is the best thing to happen to music since the electric guitar. But it needs to be done creatively. Just because RJD2 can play a few old records by dudes who happen to have known how to bang the hell out of a drum kit does not mean that he is original. In fact, as anyone who has followed hip-hop since Shadow’s debut record can attest, it means exactly the opposite.
