Hip-hop has always adhered to a structural minimalism. Like a Raymond Carver short story or a Carl Andre sculpture, the best hip-hop has utilized the simplest of aesthetics to portray the most complex emotional, political and cultural dynamics. No frills, gimmicks, or masturbatory embellishments; just simple loops, lyrics, and beats that somehow manage to convey the moral ambiguity and logical contradictions that comprise life. You don't need to be versed in Eliot and you don't have to understand Stravinsky. What you do need is the courage to spit the truth, the confidence to flow, and the basic street-level inventiveness to manipulate technology. In other words, you need to keep that shit real.
If this was Cambodia in the 1970s, the butchered bodies of Anticon emcees would line the streets. With The No Music, released on Anticon, Themselves has successfully mystified hip-hop to the point of almost complete obscurity. It's a horribly pointless and boring album that will only satisfy those who equate progress with soulless beats and abstract mic theatrics. Only after years of frying their synapses on DMT and regrettable grad-school poetry, could one possibly understand why this is considered by some to be "revolutionizing" hip-hop.
When this record's beats aren't being shrouded in noise and butchered by effects, they're flimsy and disposable. Jel, who produces the albums, lays down drums that lack any visceral resonance and uses samples which, while often creative, are always utterly predictable. The song "Poison Pit" begins with a muffled dialogue and an elevating buzzing sound before launching into a dull beat in which a barely audible Dose One "raps" in a whiny voice: "Where is the safe happy everlasting page-long candy coat?" Another voice responds: "Over there, draped over your black birthday black and exposed throat." While passages such as this one may have a deep and resonating meaning to Anticon fans, to the rest of us, it sounds like pretentious nonsense that would play out a lot better on paper than on the tape. Perhaps Dose One would benefit from being reminded that hip-hop is derived from the spoken word traditions of the Last Poets and not the modernist obscurity of Ezra Pound or H. Doolittle.
Another even more baffling excursion down the rabbit hole of ponderous pretense is the next track, "Live Trap". Over a doubled-up, pseudo-jungle beat, Dose One raps faster than anyone could possibly understand. He may be conveying the secrets of the world (although I seriously doubt that), but in his under-enunciated sing-song flow, all power is lost.
I don't think anyone's trying to constrict hip-hop from continuing to evolve with the times. But when something is as purposefully obscure as The No Music you have to wonder whether it qualifies as being revolutionary or merely self-indulgent. Although not quite as often as on previous releases, there are some passages on The No Music where Dose One manages to string along some particularly evocative imagery. But for the most part, the beauty is lost in the sonic flatulence of self-important experimentation.
