One of the great pleasures of discovering musical prodigies is the knowledge that anyone brilliant enough to create great art at a young age is usually also savvy enough to change over the course of an elongated career. Bob Dylan is the totem example, but everyone from Conor Oberst to Dizzee Rascal has made bold, stirring moves. Even the failures-- usually frequent-- are interesting and fun. Jimmy Edgar was discovered by Warp at 18 in 2001, and he's spent the last decade developing the kind of résumé you might expect from a Detroiter who was playing raves at 15. His work is dotted with hard electro, funk, hip-hop, and raunchy pop. Edgar's XXX, only his second full-length album and first for !K7, is not fun and, more importantly, it's not very interesting.
XXX sounds like strip-club music made by someone who, well, really loves strip clubs. This is not a surprise from an artist whose most famous track is "I Wanna Be Your STD". To put it another way: XXX sounds like what Lords of Acid album covers look like. XXX has attraction, sex, fucking, some afterglow, but it's uncomfortably entitled and vain. "Hot, Raw, Sex" isn't about hot, raw sex, per se, it's about what Edgar considers such an experience to be. The song's mantra: "We had/ What I call/ Hot, raw sex." What are Edgar's standards for hot, raw sex? We don't know!
Edgar has often bristled at those who refer to his music as electronic, and he might finally have a point: Though the source instruments remain analog keyboards and computers, XXX is a fairly straight pop-funk album. He's probably taking aim at Prince, and sometimes he gets there: the slow-winding groove of "Physical Motion", the pillow keys and spacey funk of "Midnite Fone Call". More often he finds Prince's weirdo offspring: David Banner's whisper-porn on "Push", the brainy thwump of Mu (minus the heavy psychosis) on "In My Color".
In interviews, Edgar is confrontational, declarative, and tactless. Describing his favorite festival moment in an interview with Resident Advisor, Edgar said, "I've got video tape of black security guards booty dancing to my set at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival a few years ago. Then it pans to a one-armed break dancer, spinning on his nub." This kind of reckless confidence-- that of a person who was declared a musical force at such a young age-- bleeds into XXX. The album feels haughty and off-putting even when its influences (frequently) and execution (less so) are on-point. We expect roadbumps with prodigies, but Edgar should be encouraged to fail more charmingly next time.
