Quakers features 41 tracks in 69 1/2 minutes. Now there's a fair amount of background detail to roll out when it comes to the latest Stones Throw release-- an indie rap committee project assembled by Portishead's Geoff Barrow, abetted by co-producers 7-Stu-7 and Katalyst, and given over to everyone from abstract-rap vets to obscure, googleproofed MySpace MCs. But above everything else, those numbers still jump out more than anything. Again: 41 tracks, 69 1/2 minutes. Oh, yeah-- and 30-plus different names listed after the "ft."s. That's a whole lot of one-verse wonders, interstitial skits, hidden segues, thematic 180s, abrupt mood swings, and beat-the-clock lyrical scrambling. How do you keep an over-the-top battle royale like this from falling apart completely? The glib answer would be to crack wise about most tracks ending before any flaws show up to tear them apart, but that'd be shortchanging an album that's actually got some engaging weight behind it.
As the most recognizable name, it might be tempting to see Barrow as the creative driving force behind this record, and if heads remember how much "Elysium" sounded like the best beat the RZA never made, they might adjust their expectations accordingly. But the three-man production team doesn't shine the spotlight on any particular member, so it's best to think of the beat-crafting braintrust of Quakers as some sort of hivemind hydra, siphoning the weirder corners of underground hip-hop source material into an unpredictably heavy-hitting body of work. Everything from Radiohead-via-marching-band ("Fitta Happier") to Rachmaninoff-via-soul ("Oh Goodness") gets incorporated into a repertoire that occasionally skews toward the smart-ass eclectic. (The over-the-top Moog prog of "Russia With Love" and the Moroderized synthpop grandeur of "Dark City Lights" also make for attention-getting diversions.) And if that down-for-whatever approach keeps things from feeling entirely cohesive, the team does find paydirt when they approach a common denominator-- the musty-basement vibe of Nixon-era soundtracks and soul-jazz curios turned feral, another valiant entry in the race to find out just how much contemporary pull you can get from a vintage-minded production arsenal.
There's some real inspired filthiness here, too. The Drummers of Burundi around which Joni Mitchell built "The Jungle Line" get refitted to give Phat Kat and Guilty Simpson something to barrel through, and it's one of those drum breaks that has a real supple liquidity even as it knocks, like a torrent of running water that leaves bruises. (The tendon-severing clavinet is a bonus.) The more acidic side of early 1970s R&B is done justice by the slinky fuzz guitar on Dead Prez feature "Soul Power", the elephant-bell jumpsuit strut of "Smoke" covers the rubber-band funk of the decade's second half, and the all-exclamation-point Memphis horns of "What Chew Want" would be all sorts of 1995 even without the ODB singalong. Hell, even the interstitials bump. A skeptic could question why tracks like the seething boom-clap Drive-gone-g-funk "The Lo" or the two-ton analog-synth lurch of "Kreem" were left as segues, rather than getting fleshed out into full-length beats that would make even the most sluggishly zoned-out MC sound diabolical. But listening to the album in sequence, as attention-dividing as it might be, at least makes these sub-minute interludes feel integral.
It would've been easy for a high-profile all-star project like this to just call up a handful of already-established MCs, throw in one unexpected up-and-comer for tastemaker cred, and take that to the bank. But it wouldn't have the bewildering but endearing clusterfuck personality that makes it engagingly weird. A few of Stones Throw's usual suspects show up with their A-game-- that "National Anthem"-via-"Tusk" beat on "Fitter Happier" is absolutely annihilated by Guilty Simpson in peak shit-talk mode, M.E.D. holds his own on the subsequent verse, and Aloe Blacc's turn on "Sign Language" is the coolly self-assured reminder we need that the man who gave us the retro-soul Good Things can rap his ass off when he feels like it. Organized Konfusion's Prince Po ("Rock My Soul"), the Pharcyde's Booty Brown ("TV Dreaming"), and the aforementioned dead prez round out a reliable set of verses that feel like welcome extensions of the retrofitted KRS and Audio Two drops scattered throughout the record-- reverent toward veterans, but still willing to integrate them into a project with a lot of new blood.
All those unknown (or at least under-known) quantities can take some getting used to, however. Not that they're not ready for prime time or anything-- it's just that some of them either have difficulties establishing a unique spark with the limited time they're given, or inversely make such an odd impression that they feel like weird outliers. As much as the whole lyrical-lyricist battler style has struggled with cliché, there's nothing flagrantly corny dropped by the likes of Synato Watts ("Big Cat"), Quite Nyce ("Jobless"), or Buff 1 ("Sidewinder") – just some solid-enough verbiage that gets lost in the shuffle amidst a cast of dozens. And the stuff that jumps out does so to an almost disruptive extent. Emilio Rojas's Oscar Grant-invoking anti-police-brutality verse on "Belly of the Beast" takes up maybe 80 seconds, but its righteous-fury venom is enough to erase any impression that the previous few tracks might have made. "What Chew Want" features a Brooklynite named Tone Tank whose casual ethnic jokes and self-aware faux-stoopidity feel like he's aiming for white-dude Das Racist, while recent Stones Throw signee Dave Dub carries over that ODB energy and grafts it with Biz Markie and Aesop Rock on the woozy "My Mantra". Katalyst collaborator Coin Locker Kid shows up on three different tracks, and the impression the Fayetteville MC makes-- bundle-of-nerves crazy in 7/8 over "Russia With Love", arrogant velvet on "The Beginning", Mos Def-as-Bobcat Goldthwait on "Get Live"-- shows mere hints of what feels like a limitless reserve of strangeness.
Quakers is kind of a mess, and odds are that a not-insignificant number of people are going to find the beats more consistently entertaining than the verses. (The CD version of the album includes a full instrumental version as a bonus disc, so no worries there, at least.) But ambitious messes are the best kind, and riding out the less-interesting moments is worth it in the long run. It's a sprawling, overstuffed deluge that feels longer than it is, but can't really be pared down or scrapped for parts. Best to just let it go start-to-finish and have its constant changes of scenery dart past until you can find something to linger on.
