For all of the hip-hop landmarks to see the light in 1988-- It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back , By All Means Necessary , Straight Outta Compton , Critical Beatdown , Long Live the Kane , The Great Adventures of Slick Rick -- one detail that often goes overlooked is the fact that it was also the year Grandmaster Flash released his last LP, briefly reuniting with Melle Mel to drop the commercially disappointing On the Strength . After it tanked, Flash shifted his focus to become a highly in-demand touring DJ, which wasn't the worst career move: His status as a musical icon is indelible in any case, and some of the mixes he released-- like 2002's b-boy break/scratch showcase The Official Adventures of Grandmaster Flash or 1997's disco mix Salsoul Jam 2000 (re-released in 2005 as Mixing Bullets and Firing Joints )-- are essential for anyone who likes old-school hip-hop.
But while I won't begrudge Flash for wanting to get back into the studio and reassert his place in the hip-hop pantheon, maybe we should all agree to pretend that The Bridge doesn't actually exist. Expecting a great, sonically relevant album in 2009 from one of the few hip-hop artists to get pressed on wax 30 years ago might be a bit naïve-- especially when the artist in question hasn't dropped a full-length album of original beats since the Reagan administration-- but it's Flash , dammit, the man who personified the DJ for an entire generation. How could he have a hand in anything so sub-par?
The reason is simple: he's trying to be something he's never been. The production of The Bridge sounds like it came out of an extended catch-up session, the work of a man best accustomed to the breakbeat era's techniques trying his hand at the last ten years' worth of club-rap digitalism. That's why there's almost no samples on this album-- and, alarmingly enough, a severe dearth of actual scratching and cutting, aside from the interlude-length track "Zuka the Sound" and the clusterfuck "Here Comes My DJ", which features DJ Kool and DJ Demo and a lot of sub-Khaled yelling. "Tribute to the Breakdancer" is the only other track that sounds like it has some connection to the old-school continuum Flash helped establish, and it's such a fossilized, half-hearted remember-the-80s cliché that it marks the first time I've actually rolled my eyes when the immortal "Apache" break popped up.
The rest of the album is built on a foundation of flat-sounding synths and stylistic confusion: fluffy faux-Soulquarians ("Shine All Day"; "Grown & Sexy"), tinny, stagger-step pretend-Timbaland ("Bounce Back"), club-pop beats that Fergie would have to think for a minute or two about before green-lighting ("Those Chix"), and a number of post- Mary J. Rap&B sounds that could've been constructed any time in the last 15 years ("Unpredictable"; "Swagger"). " Oh Man " , the album-closing showcase for Natacha Atlas and MySpace find Syndee, is the least tone-deaf track on the album -- and it ' s essentially just straight-up house music. I don ' t doubt for a moment that Flash has kept his ear to the streets at every opportunity over the last several years, but this kind of thing just doesn ' t play to his strengths.
The guest list bears some of the blame for The Bridge 's failings, too, though it's a bit of a disappointing surprise how perfunctory some of these legends sound. Q-Tip's verse on "Shine All Day" tries to extend the love vibes of The Renaissance and comes up with Hallmark mawkishness ("ominous clouds come and get dreary/when you're around though, girl, I'm never weary"), Snoop Dogg's pimp-autopilot verse on "Swagger" isn't passable enough to endure Lynn Carter's syrupy, pitch-corrected hook for, and if you were geeked to find out that Big Daddy Kane shows up twice on this album, keep in mind it's ladies-man Kane and not best-MC-ever-candidate Kane. KRS-One comes closest to surprising, taking the potentially didactic world-without-hip-hop scenario of "What If" and, after stating that an entire culture would be poorer without it, admitting that criminal culture wouldn't be as widely celebrated either. Inner conflict? In my nostalgia trip?
Flash does deserve some credit for giving some relative unknowns a chance to shine on a record with hip-hop' s most legendary DJ on the cover, though it says something that the most intriguing-sounding of the album ' s obscure MCs -- Sweden ' s Afasi, Spain ' s Kase-O, Japan ' s Maccho, and Senegal ' s Abass, who liven up " We Speak hip-hop"-- don ' t even rap in English. The notion that Flash is an international ambassador of hip-hop-- and a man who escaped the meat grinder of pop music ' s disposable star culture to make it as an independently-operating veteran-- means a lot more than his ability to get behind the boards and crank out some generic club bangers. Weak as The Bridge is, it ' s not even remotely enough to damage his legacy or his true skills on the wheels of steel.
