Most horrible music can trace its horribleness back to a root concept or thought. It's not necessarily the production, musicianship, or lyrics that cause horrible music to happen; the core of the problem comes much earlier. At some point, a musician, producer or label employee thinks, "Hey, what if...?" And if there had only been someone there to just shout a resounding "no," we'd be spared a good deal of horrible music. Hey, what if Puff Daddy reworked "Kashmir" for Godzilla? No. What if Mya, Pink, and Lil Kim covered "Lady Marmalade?" No. "Hey, fellow members of Alien Ant Farm, what if we covered Michael Jackson?" No. "Johnny, it's Jello. After you finish up Benny & Joon, let's start a band with Flea." No. "Disney, it's Tricky. I was thinking of doing duets with Cyndi Lauper, Anthony Kiedis, and the guy from Live. Oh, and this Jamaican rapper is going to cover Nirvana." No, No, No, please god, No.
For the sake of keeping that sentence short I didn't even mention the song with John Frusciante, "1 Da Woman," in which the Chili Peppers guitarist wah-wahs the theme to Linda Carter's "Wonder Woman" while belting "Yooooou show me everything/ Yooooou feel me everywhere." So just as horrible music could, at times, be preempted in its brainstorming stage, so too can record reviews hopefully deter consumers with basic description.
Lately, Tricky has just been loaded with terrible ideas. On his recent Epitaph EP, the smoke-breathing, lizard-larynxed visionary sang Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" over tepid breakbeats. What makes it sting so much more is that Tricky truly created some of the most original music of the 1990s. He gave us a sultry chanteuse singing a brilliant tabla-punk cover of Public Enemy. "Yoga" and "Headphones" remain two of the most haunting, head-humping songs in Björk's catalogue. "Vent" hypnotized by merely stacking drunken drumrolls. Even the under-rated Angels with Dirty Faces took black psychedelia to new peaks.
And here, it's important to note the critics' role in ruining Tricky. Angels with Dirty Faces was roundly shat upon on its release. I venture to say that this is because its heroin menace didn't gel with critical preconceptions of where trip-hop, and the I-was-just-in-The Fifth Element Tricky, should go. Here was Bristol music that sounded very boutique-unfriendly. But Tricky had left trip-hop in the dust. Never one to take criticism lightly (he beat the sweet bejesus out of a critic backstage at a concert once), Tricky then got it into his head that he should become some sort of rap-pop revolutionary. Each release since Angels has come coated in studio sheen and radio-reaching thump.
Blowback, Tricky's Hollywood debut, in every sense of the word, offers crisp snippets of bass-heavy garbage bookended by some fantastic, hope-breathing songs, "Excess" and "Song for Yukiko." The first single, "Evolution Revolution Love," would be tolerable if-- and this is a monumental "if"-- Live's Ed Kowalczyk wasn't chanting, "Let me take it to tha mic." That nasally, quasi-spiritual tart should be issued fatwas, not allowed near microphones. Literally, anybody else-- Jeff Lynne, Jeremy Dupree, Lil Romeo, Carnie Wilson, Graham Smith, Corin Tucker-- would serve the song better.
Anthony Kiedis' appearance is inherently awful, but closer attention reveals even more misguided atrocities. Tricky starts the Chili Peppered rock number barking, "I've never seen my dad, boy," a sentiment that, from the mouth and mind of Tricky, seems rather genuine and revealing. Kiedis, however, supplements this in the only misguided, testes-soaked way he knows: by singing "step into the sun" and rapping, "Rabble-rousers, I'm poppin' blouses/ Shake it for me, baby, let me step into your trousers/ I-I-I-I-I-I-I allow this/ Come on, baby, let me take it to your houses."
"You Don't Wanna" showcases the respectable pipes of Topley-Bird replacement Ambersunshower, but Tricky offers a cheap-keyboard musical bed stolen from the Eurythmics' attic. Surprisingly, Cyndi Lauper's appearance on "Five Days" makes for one of the better tracks, but one that Tricky would loathe to know heavily reminds this listener of Massive Attack. The numerous tracks with Jamaican dancehall bullfrog, Hawkman, rise above the celebrity help, but in this post-multi-platinum-Shaggy era, when "It Wasn't Me" infests from every Subway Sandwiches P.A., the edibility of said tracks remain questionable. Plus, there's that god-awful cover of Nirvana's "Something in the Way," which sounds like Shaggy bellowing "it ok ta eet fish kuss they doan have any feeeee-lun" over something Martin Gore programmed in 1982. Carbon monoxide is better for you.
At this point, Tricky seems forever lost. The best songs on Blowback simply sound like radio-marinated Maxinquaye. In a recent NME interview Tricky boasts that Blowback even betters Maxinquaye, which he now finds to be weak and Sneaker Pimp-like, an argument which could easily be leveled at half the songs here. He advertises that this is music that has been "completely unheard of." If only that were the case. If only Goofy had leaned into the mic on the mixing board, looked Tricky in his ganja-shuttered eyes through the studio glass, and said, "No."
