Before I get started a quick apology for my last review, wherein readers have pointed out that I mistakenly referred to Cheekface as Cake not once…but twice. What the hell? Similar does not equal same. I also apologize to Cheekface, an excellent band that does not deserve such obvious copy edit oversight. I have since corrected that entry.
OK, let’s do better.
Disc 1871 is… Primitive Plus
Artist: Edan
Year of Release: 2002
What’s up with the Cover? One interpretation of this cover is that this robot has been programmed to walk the dog. One boring interpretation.
Another interpretation would be that this robot was designed to “learn” from its human owners, but ultimately murdered them, after an ill-fated family movie night where it failed to understand the “pretend” nature of a sci fi film selected by the youngest son. Now, alone in the house (apart from the battered corpses of the former occupants) it is caught in a logic loop mimicking their previous behaviours.
Here we see it walking the dog on a winter morning. The neighbours thought it was quite a nifty spectacle until, ten days later, it was dragging the now dead dog around like it was still alive. The police were called in, the mayhem uncovered, and a very wide recall of JIROK home robots (and subsequent class action lawsuit) were all quick to follow.
But I digress…
How I Came To Know It: I read about this album on a “top” album list of some kind that has since been lost in the mists of time. I decided to see for myself if it deserved such accolades. Turns out, it did.
How It Stacks Up: I have two Edan albums, and “Primitive Plus” is the best.
Ratings: 4 stars
Edan (aka Edan Portnoy) likes words, and dude knows a lot of them. The Maryland rapper has a density of language that is rivaled by very few. MF Doom comes to mind, but otherwise this is about as densely packed a bale of rhymes as you are likely to find.
A heavy dose of rhyme does not a great emcee make, however, at least not on its own. You need to have flow, and your words have to be going somewhere.
Here things became harder to decipher. “Primitive Plus” came at me so fast I wasn’t at first sure if it was brilliant or just clever for clever’s sake. Ultimately, it is brilliant. At first things are moving along so fast you wonder what the point of it all is. Then you realize that underneath all those verbal gymnastics is a rapidly moving kaleidoscope of imagery that may not always be telling a story but IS always painting a picture.
Edan raps so fast on this record that it feels like he never takes a breath. Of course, that’s impossible, and it is just his lily-pad leap style that constantly tiptoes forward that makes it feel like that way. The break is just so hidden in the flow you gotta listen for it.
His style evokes the coolest skinny kid in normcore clothes in school. Nerd central yes, but nerdism turned on its head to be the hippest thing you’ve ever heard. His mid-Atlantic accent curls around his delivery and draws out vowels in a way that helps hold your attention through the soup of multisyllabic wordplay. That wordplay is a torrent of rhyme. If there is a record out there that has as many words per minute as “Primitive Plus” I can’t think of it.
From a beat perspective, Edan combines samples from early rap masters like Eric B. and Rakim with a muesli of thumps, beeps and sproings that break most rules of what should be fun to listen to and somehow still works.
Underneath it all, Edan has written a love letter to early rap. It isn’t remotely your dad’s rap music, but it borrows heavily from the themes and structures of that early sound, even to the point where its main theme is that age-old original approach – rapping about how well he can rap.
He takes the flows of that previous time and turns them on their head, then injects them with aluminum and quicksilver and sets them dancing. It isn’t evolution so much as a cyborg implant. Part organic, part robot, and manic as all get out.
Of the million lines that caught my attention in Edan’s endless flow I’ll end by sharing just one that best sums it all up:
“Silver surfer on the cerebellum.”
The Power Cosmic indeed, but here the intergalactic travel all happens between your ears.
Best tracks: One Man Arsenal, Humble Magnificent, Emcees Smoke Crack, #1 Hit Record, Primitive Plus, You Suck, Run That Shit!,
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