With all due respect to both parties, Dudley Perkins is a poor man's Wesley Willis. The latter-- God bless his soul-- achieved cult status in the rock world with his sometimes disturbing, always ridiculous lyrics over the strict musical formula of three verses, a chorus, and a painfully long pre-programmed Casio keyboard loop "solo" before the third verse. One only imagines how many freshmen dorm rooms in America have been sent into late-night hysterics when twenty or thirty Pabst-nursing Napster newbies crowded around a buddy's Pentium II to hear Willis' glorious tales about the Hell City bus and a llama's whooped ass. As anyone will report, for about two weeks-- the average time most people willingly subject themselves to Willis' music-- it's just glorious, shit-in-pants excitement.
Dudley Perkins, when not casting himself as ho-hum mid-90s rapper Declaime, is quickly becoming the 300-hundred-pound black schizophrenic rambling novelty of the rhythm-and-blues world. Perkins has his own formula: generally speaking, a two-chord jazzy vamp fronted by poorly sung two-line epigrams, repeated ad nauseam. It's a formula that first manifested itself in the form of the heavily blunted "Flowers", which came out of some studio tinkering between Perkins and the increasingly prominent producer Madlib. "Flowers" caught the ear of Stones Throw founder Peanut Butter Wolf, who quickly released it as its own seven-inch, and then included the track on his Jukebox 45s compilation.
"Flowers" was cute and inconsequential, and Perkins' lazy delivery-- to the point that he had only a few phrases he'd repeat-- merited its small release. After one track, though, Perkins' formula wears out its welcome. Here, Wesley Willis proves superior: he had a formula, but at the very least his lyrics were different with each verse, and, because he isolated his keyboard solo, one could always skip over it and get to his final verse. Perkins' voice, on the other hand, is the irritating keyboard solo of his own songs, and, because he sings throughout, one can't skip over them-- as if there were anything interesting to get to in the first place. Perkins' lyrics are painfully insipid, and given the tone of his delivery, curiously more self-important than they ought to be.
It's pointless to discuss these tracks individually-- with the words changed, they're practically the same: Perkins trying to be sincere about the most hackneyed R&B; stock. The project itself is undoubtedly tongue-in-cheek, but that doesn't stop the majority of these tracks from being outright atrocious. "Momma" has Perkins praising his mother with vomit-worthy repetitions of "it was you who gave me life"; "The Light" has Perkins explaining that he "knows why [his] soul burns-- and yearns-- for knowledge"; Perkins tell us in "Yo' Soul" that "you can feel it in yo' body, you can feel it in yo' soul", but never actually says what "it" is.
If Perkins' debut had simply failed at an honest attempt to create something worthwhile, it would be one thing. But A Lil' Light actually ruins otherwise solid tracks all but intentionally. In a sense, A Lil' Light could be seen as two competing albums: Perkins' vapid mockery of the genre, and Madlib's breathtaking instrumentals. Occasionally Madlib's beats are enough to propel the tracks out of Perkins' vacuity: beyond the short but engaging Yesterday's New Quintet breaks, "Money", the album's single, sports an addictive, rubbery bassline; "Just Think" proves how masterfully Madlib can baste mid-90s style rhythms with a subtle 60s jazz flavor; "Falling", perhaps not the song most indicative of the album's sound but by far its standout track, boasts brilliant string and bell samplings behind Perkins' inane spoken word outing.
Although Madlib's work here isn't necessarily as quirky as his instrumentals for Quasimoto's The Unseen and the tracks that are floating around from his upcoming Madvillain collaboration with MF Doom, he does save the record from being a total disaster-- sometimes overcoming zero gravity. As for Dudley Perkins, it might behoove him to know that McDonalds is the place to rock. It is a restaurant where they buy food to eat.
