Spaced out

I'VE NEVER PENNED a column dedicated to local MCs, and this installment is no exception. It's not that the Bay Area isn't home to many talented hip-hop artists but that so few of them press up their recordings on vinyl. I know this because I check Amoeba Music almost every week, and the number of locally produced CDs far outweighs the wax vinyl fiends like me live for. So imagine my surprise when I came across rap collective Nameless and Faceless' Next Train I'm Out EP (Creative Control), packed with crowd pleasers like "Nine Lives" and a remixed version of Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon." DJs in particular should check for the excellent beats produced by Inspector Double Negative, DJ Riddm, Richard Rockwell, and C-Level, all of which come with instrumentals for your pleasure. Then there's the Let It Off EP by the Psychokinetics (Ill Kinetics, www.psychokinetics.com), another funky addition to the Bay Area's long, proud tradition of dirty, grimy, cellar-dwelling hip-hop.

Nothing impressed me more than Oakland-based trio cLOUDDEAD's seventh EP in little more than a year, The Sound of a Handshake (Mush, www.dirtyloop.com). On the title track Dose One and Why? (who graciously included a lyric sheet) turn a tale of yet another record company "hooker" into a sound collage in which phrases are double-tracked and words are spoken repetitively. Producer Odd Nosdam tacks on an instrumental at the end that's something of a mindfuck, with the phrase "you must be satisfied" looped over a grungy, ominous beat.

Longtime readers will notice that cLOUDDEAD have appeared in this column almost as often as artists who appear on the Stones Throw and Def Jux record labels do. But while I regularly purchase Stones Throw joints because of their dope beats, I listen to cLOUDDEAD because they challenge my preconceptions of what hip-hop is and where it's headed. Years ago I often imagined what would happen if MCs began rapping over abstract beats more akin to alternative rock than funk or soul, and at times, cLOUDDEAD is the unlikely manifestation of those dreams. Of course, they don't rap as much as rhythmically scat over a song, which makes it all the more interesting to me.

Sole, who co-owns the Anticon label and, as an MC, has recorded with cLOUDDEAD, told me he believes his label and cLOUDDEAD "don't fit into any category." I would concur, and add that the best rap music being made now usually blurs the lines between hip-hop and other genres, like minimalist techno (Anti-Pop Consortium), electro (Cannibal Ox, El-P), and in the case of Quasimoto's new Astronaut EP (Antidote, www.stonesthrow.com), spoken word records. On three tracks, Quasimoto and his producer Madlib rap when they want to, often cutting short their rhymes after a few bars. The music is just as haphazard and is punctuated by snippets from old-school rappers (as in poets, you dig?) like Melvin Van Peebles.