The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive is the internet's biggest dedicated site for transcriptions of rap verses, featuring everything from an exhaustive rundown of every Notorious B.I.G. appearance to the lyrics of Fantasy Three's 1984 B-side "The Buck Stops Here". Yet despite the fact that Rob Sonic released his second album, Sabotage Gigante, back in September, ohhla.com doesn't even have an entry for him. It's probably not because he's too obscure or not well-established enough; he's been an integral part of the Definitive Jux roster for years. A more likely explanation is that, when faced with a Rob Sonic album, most potential transcribers would probably wind up furrowing their brows, wearing out the rewind button and eventually giving up in total defeat. The thing about Sabotage Gigante, like 2004's Telicatessen, is that it's got an approachable incoherence-- listening to it, you feel like you know English but somehow you don't really know English. Sonic's got a sharp, punchy voice, sort of like labelmate Aesop Rock only with a little less sneer in his inflection. And, much like Aes, he strings together perfectly clear and often catchy fragments of phrasing in a way that turns a full verse into a long string of question marks. Some critics have made the smarmy assertion/joke that Bob Dylan invented rap with "Subterranean Homesick Blues", but Rob Sonic actually gives you an idea of what it'd be like if that was actually true.
Sabotage Gigante has been said to be Sonic's political album, at least in a more wide-ranging and universal way than Telicatessen's the-personal-is-political themes, but there are so many generalities, abstractions, reappropriated slogans, moments of quadruplespeak, and pseudo-non-sequitur asides that much of the listener's time between headphones is spent trying to untangle it all. "Dead as Disco" seems to be a diatribe concerned with the need for escapism during times of national upheaval ("I'll hit the nail on the head tonight/ And no I won't believe another thing that's said tonight/ 'Cause that tiny little radiating engine light/ Means that they wanna make us party like we're dead tonight"), but it's expanded past the usual backpacker/punk rock "stupid happy music distracts you from What's Really Going On" didacticism into a fractured anti-narrative that curses out oil barons and the mayor's mansion in the same verse he expresses an urge to "fuck Mona Lisa 'til her smile is gone." "Rock the Convoy" launches into a CB-jargon-filled bit of trucker references before gradually turning its pill-riddled road-fatigue paranoia in on itself and metaphors start collapsing into each other like an Escher room. And when it's all tossed at you in fast-rap mode, like in the confounding "Ready Aim Shoot", it's probably better to hang back and wait for some insight to jump out from between all the verbiage. The only guest rappers, Busdriver and the aforementioned Aesop Rock, seem to be taken along for the ride largely for their ability to keep pace with the kind of baffling, elusively-deep lyrics Rob Sonic specializes in.
All this lyrical density does discourage passive listening, though, and it's a good thing that the repeat listens that are positively essential for getting to the bottom of this record are made easier with an immediate catchiness. Sometimes it helps to just wait for the chorus, which is often where Rob hangs the clearest declaration of the lyrics' real meaning. "Felt kinda strange when I woke up this morning/ Like thousands of weapons were aimin' at me," he spits sing-song in the early moments of "Teeth Eat Her", while the hook for "The Over Under" makes like a hectoring take on A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory quickie "What?": "You can't do the dirt and then use a bath towel/ No milk and honey if you kill your cash cow/ Can't make the moves if you throw your back out/ You can't get your rocks off in a glass house." (That's half the hook; the other half consists of the phrase "I wanna do the bump, but there's bombs in the way.") And even if the production eventually starts to congeal into a soupy glop of mid-uptempo stoner-rock-- dude sure likes that synthesized, fuzzed-out bass/guitar sound, putting his Sabotage closer to Sabbath than the Beasties-- at least it's a soupy glop with some bump to it, a simple and straightforward counter to the lyrical barrage that he flows over with a more-than-competent authority. It's not the most involved album of 2007's decent-enough indie-rap contingent, but once you get through your 10th listen-- or at least get your hands on a lyric sheet-- it'll sound a lot deeper. Assuming it doesn't get even more confusing, which to be honest is probably just as good an outcome.
