Few things are more dangerous to good pop than a perfectly talented artist who thinks his music isn't smart enough. It's the sort of attitude that combines the most perilous ideas a musician can have-- the urge to ignore or downplay the strengths of his past work; an underestimation of what that supposedly inadequate music actually means to fans; a presumptuous, elitist idea of what "advancement" involves-- and then pins an uncomfortable impetus on the longtime listener: If you're not ready to grow and expand with this new style, maybe you'd be better off bobbing your heads to that old slapdash bullshit with the rest of the safety-craving bandwagoneers.
There was an understandably furious internet reaction to a quote from a mid-2004 allhiphop.com interview with Rjd2, where the then-in-demand indie rap producer claimed that he considered much of his hip-hop production to be "moron music." It was a tossed-off dismissal that implicated everything from his well-aging 2002 debut Deadringer (which boasted "The Horror", without question one of the most amped-up hell-yeah hip-hop instrumentals of the decade) to his rock-solid work with Soul Position to the sharp Pete Rock-caliber "Saliva", the best beat on Viktor Vaughn (MF Doom)'s Vaudeville Villain. And while his attempts to straighten up the quote's context were fervent-- helpfully clarifying that he didn't think all hip-hop production was dumb, he just felt mentally stunted making his own sometimes-- it's still difficult to avoid feeling as though you've been played like a sucker for investing a lot more time and interest into that music than its creator apparently did.
It all seemed to come to a head near the release of Since We Last Spoke, released around the time of that infamous interview: As an expansion of Rjd2's post-Shadow blueprint, it was a successful effort at making a mostly-instrumental, retro-minded but current-sounding funk/rock album using hip-hop production techniques. But successive interviews and articles revealed that it also caused enough engineering headaches to lead Rj to believe that sample-hunting was a dead end, that ProTools was the enemy, and that he was really just meant to be a pop songwriter like Elliott Smith or Britt Daniel.
The Third Hand is Rjd2's Big Important Musical Statement, meant to announce his transformation from lumpenprole beat flogger to true pop (read: rock) artist: Aside from the drums, everything on the album originates from a Real Live Instrument played by Rj, which he then pieces together and warps into shape like some sort of Todd Rundgren homunculus. It sadly turns out to be an unsettling piece of evidence that he's lost without someone else's pre-existing sounds to extrapolate from and transform. He still draws from other artists' ideas*-- The Third Hand* is rife with flashes of indie pop touchstones like Stereolab, Syd Barrett-era Floyd, and the Zombies-- but the album resembles an overambitious Money Mark record, bloated keyboards crowding his grooves until they sound cramped and irritable. Between the quivering harps, weepy mellotrons, and delicate, pixie-dust electronics that litter the album, Rj must think all you need to do to transmogrify into a pop genius is to imagine what the soundtrack to a Zach Braff remake of Wild Style would sound like.
What still remains of his hip-hop backbone-- the powerful, charging drum breaks that were his stock in trade dating back to his Mhz days-- feels grossly out of place. The beats feel bullish and overbearing amidst all the lightness, giving turbocharged propulsion to songs that feel like they're better off ambling, and forcing uprock rhythms to rudely stuff paisley ascots into their Adidas track tops. "Rules for Normal Living" is a particularly weird attempt at a dance track, sticking the album's only semblance of an electro-style beat in the middle of the track-- almost as a punchline-- and bookending it with a wheezing plod that sounds like the fat, arthritic version of Kraftwerk's "Tour de France". "Sweet Piece" is even more baffling: The Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" funklessly gussied up, a neutered caricature of a groove that loses all its promise once you figure out that its idea of a melodic instrumental hook is a noodle-armed shrug of a synth riff that evaporates almost immediately. "Just When" ganks the opening beat to "Billie Jean" (or an incredible simulation of it) and turns its sleek, minimalist 4/4 into a cluttered, halting traffic jam.
Much of the disappointment of The Third Hand is that of expectation, and elements that initially register as nauseating treacle can sometimes sneak up on you. The two best instrumental tracks on the record, "Get It" and "The Bad Penny", lack the bravado and heaviness of his earlier work but still feel alive and well-crafted, even as they strain for a baroque psychedelia they can't quite reach. But another reason they stand out is that Rj doesn't sing on them. Prior to this record, Since We Last Spoke's closing track, "Through the Walls", was his only other significant attempt at writing pop lyrics, and with his flat, non-committal voice hesitantly muttering words that sounded like power-pop fridge magnet poetry, it practically demanded that someone with a bit more presence take over on lead vocal. (Fortunately, someone hollered for Ric Ocasek to do the remix.) The other vocal number on that record-- the wispy, syrupy Labi Siffre cover "Making Days Longer"-- is the unfortunate precedent for Rj's turn toward vocal melody, and the same halfhearted falsetto runs rampant over The Third Hand.
Typically overdubbed into semi-coherent oblivion and grinding gears between deadpan and over-dramatic, his voice is a grating mess, creaking out non-sequitur high notes and juggling both fake-Brit (Bille Joe Armstrong sounds like Ray Davies in comparison) and fake-soul (ibid. Jamie Lidell and Teddy Pendergrass) affectations. Not that any voice could save the lyrics: Between the poorly-scanning turns of phrase ("She can get plump off of beer and meatloaf," from "You Never Had It So Good"), the pointless similes ("Little princess/ With her little ways gone bad/ You should ask her/ About the dates she had/ Mr. Legend, Dr. Civic and Mr. Lexus," from "Sweet Piece") and the out-of-touch stabs at populist subject matter ("Have Mercy" makes working a job downtown sound as harrowing as the woes in a Lightnin' Hopkins song), Pharrell can rest easy knowing that "Her ass is a spaceship/ I want to ride" has plummeted in "rap producer-turned-singer writes something laughable" standings.
Unfortunately, The Third Hand is aptly-titled: It feels like a step below second-hand. Would it have felt any less ridiculous if it were an out-of-nowhere debut from someone we'd never heard of instead of an attempted breakthrough by one of underground hip-hop's best producers? Marginally, if that. And maybe if Rj works out the flaws and figures out his limitations, chances are he'll do what a few other writers have predicted and produce a pretty good Gorillaz record in a few years. But after reading him say that he's more interested in making records people would want to sample than sampling other peoples' records, one can only hope he's right and that some future producer can salvage something from this debacle.
