After years of playing second-fiddle to the mainstream, underground hip-hop is finally making serious waves. Due in no small part to the ghetto-tech innovations of The Neptunes/Timbaland axis, even the hardest-to-please music fans have, over the past few years, been flocking to the mainstream for their hip-hop fixes-- but now, with Def Jux running underground shit and endless collectives (the Anticon, Rhymesayers, and Stones Throw crews, to name just a few) thriving, some of the illest stuff going these days is flying well below the MTV radar.
Stones Throw, in particular, has had one hell of a productive year, with MC/producer/ringleader Madlib's seemingly endless stream of records (Madvillain, Jaylib, Yesterday's New Quintet, Shades of Blue) and recent releases by Dudley Perkins and Stark Reality responsible for much of the label's recent acclaim. Strange, then, that the anticipated solo release by Madlib's Lootpack cohort Wildchild is so very pedestrian. Produced by Madlib and fellow Stones Throw-er Oh No, Secondary Protocol should, by all accounts, be one of the year's hip-hop highlights. Instead, it's a merely passable record marked by a handful of solid singles.
There are certainly plenty of interesting ideas at work here, and sometimes they come together: The first of the aforementioned singles, "Code Red", won't settle the ongoing debate over Wildchild's lyrical skills, but the banging, clickety-clack percussion track will surely keep heads nodding. The other, "Party Up", rides on a funk bassline and scratchy, distant bell percussion, with female vocals providing the song's hook-- both tracks, recently featured on a single 12-inch, will likely make lots of hipster mixtape-hitlists this year.
Likewise, "Wonder Years" shows Wildchild's flow at its best, albeit with at least one head-scratching line: "Child ponders, 'Why is it okay to drink when marijuana is still illegal?/ Though I don't smoke I wish I knew how to change it for my people." Coming from such a close associate of Madlib (by his own admission, motherfucker smokes enough herb that he should've turned into a bush by now), such a declaration of personal innocence seems downright odd.
Lyrical enigmas notwithstanding, Secondary Protocol has trouble creating an aesthetic identity. "The Movement" shapes up as a routine "respect for hip-hop" number, with Wildchild dropping overwrought lines about his loyalty to the hip-hop tradition ("Making 'em pack deep/ Like the movie Wild Style did it"). And while "Bounce" and "Secondary Protocol" show promise, they quickly wind up encumbered by too many ideas crammed into tiny sonic spaces. "Bounce" is especially reprehensible: it begins interestingly enough, with flatulent synth burbling, but by the time the vocals kick in, the track reveals itself as a decent production idea burdened by its clumsy execution. Tuneless, defiantly funkless, and packed full of weak rhymes, it's the absolute nadir of both this record and Wildchild's career to date.
"Code Red" ends with a mock Q&A; session between Wildchild and a probing journalist. Responding to a question about the album's personal nature, Wildchild goes off on a tangent to explain that Secondary Protocol is for "the mainstream heads, the worldwide heads, universal." And therein lies the problem: he seems to want this record to be all things to all people. There's not a lot obviously wrong here, but coming from a member of the Lootpack (whose 1999 LP Soundpieces: Da Antidote was a milestone for underground hip-hop), Secondary Protocol is just too damn homely to make a lasting impression in these heady days of consistently intense one-upmanship throughout the underground scene.
