In the liner notes to Front End Lifter, a collaboration between buzz-bin has-been Vernon Reid and Rope-a-Dope Records founder DJ logic, it actually says:
Your reaction to that statement depends only partially on whether or not you've listened to the album first. And if you have already listened to all 56 minutes and 14 seconds of Front End Lifter, I can assure you that your reaction will be hitting the garbage can on a quest for the golden receipt. Logic doesn't so much elevate the art of turntablism as put it in Velcro shoes and stick it on the short bus. Yeah, yeah, Combustication was pretty good, sure. But have you ever heard his Day and Night cassettes? Jesus!
This all goes double for Reid, and the rest of Living Colour, who all appear here in various supporting roles. It's obvious that Reid and Logic are aware of current alternative musical trends; the pseudo funk and hip-hop hybridization of "6996-club-yohimbe", for example, is sure as hell looking towards the West Coast whilst French-tickling the bling-bling sounds of Power 99 FM for inspiration. Problem is, it's so overloaded with half-assed rhymes (courtesy of Prince Paul and Slick Rick, among others) that the funk is utterly smothered. So yes, the Yohimbe Brothers are aware of other genres. But knowing Italian is a whole lot different than speaking the shit, know what I mean? Reid and Logic are two tongue-tied pseudo-hip motherfuckers.
Reid was playing guitar on records as early as 1981, but you'd be hard-pressed to hear anything beyond mediocre here. "Prelude to a Diss" (did they know?) is shiftless textural noodling. For all of its Bela Fleck influences, "Bamalamb" proves that Logic was able to garner nothing from his guest appearances with Fleck, something that doesn't help Reid, who ties up a struggling beatbox rhythm with more useless riffing than all two hours of "Alternative Nation". The harmonica and violin are like two white kids jamming on Tom Petty on the sidewalks of Harlem: sore thumbs all around. And the opener, "Ponk", is the worst of the lot, a needless mishmash of badly mixed rock 'n' roll noise that isn't fit to lick Buckethead's middle finger. Kicking off with a fairly boring rock instrumental on a record that purports to feature music that "may cause extreme sexual excitability" (it really says that) and asks us not to complain about the record unless we can explain it is like painting a target on your ass. So allow me:
