A colleague of mine from Scotland enamored with the hopelessly vague "Midwestern rap scene" wondered whether he could make a hip-hop album in Glasgow and still have it sound like it came from Chicago. Which seemed like a fool's errand to me, since Chicago's native sons seem more united by geographical circumstances than a clutch of easily identifiable sonic signifiers. Judging from the likes of Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Common, or even Twista, it could just be a tendency to flip nerd status to a sword from a shield. If that's the case, Second City upstarts Yea Big and Kid Static certainly carry on the tradition. They met as a result of a message-board flame war, the CD insert is fully rendered in comic art, actual pictures have them capering like an interracial Junior Senior, and they unironically open up for Rhymefest. Safe to say they do this for the love.
Prefuse 73 is frequently mentioned as a touchstone for Yea Big's production, probably because it's the easiest shorthand for "hip-hop with glitch influences" (poor Mush Records!). While Big isn't on some beats, rhymes, and life shit, he's also nowhere as confrontationally jarring as Herren; the way "Static Leads the Coup" stitches together new beats every 30 seconds is genuinely thrilling and organic, and yet, nothing feels like leavings from Warp's cutting-room floor. He does share a certain proclivity for exotic instrumentation-via-keyboard patches, but even the roly-poly tablas ("Joining Forces") and gamelan tappings ("The Final Chapter") play it four-on-the-floor. Cut out the half-minute interludes, and the exposed-wire ProTooling could pass for a lost Viktor Vaughn album.
Yea Big & Kid Static indeed shares the democracy of Doom's records, but it might have scratched the surface of Madvillain or similarly fashioned projects (Foreign Exchange, DM & Jemini, DangerDoom) if it was a more equal partnership. At first blush, Kid Static has to do a lot to win you over with that overeager upper-register spit of his; he gradually eases into a comfort zone that's somewhere in the realm of Fatlip or even Sadat X, though he lacks either one's microphone presence or wordplay. It's mostly his job to keep things moving while Big chops it up, and he rarely strays far from rapping about the fact that he is currently rapping, even if there's supposedly some sci-fi storyline buried in here. Really, it's the sort of thing where you cringe in anticipation of him talking about "real MC's" or "true hip-hop" or something, but thankfully, that moment never comes. He can ride a beat with decent agility but other than a few lines about Jager shots and beef stew, the vocal parts of this tend to be serviceable, if not interchangeable.
Good ideas, bad ideas, it doesn't matter-- they don't stay on anything for very long, and the 16 tracks clock in at a bullet-train velocity. Granted, their press kit has them in the lineage of Digital Underground, De La Soul and Biz Markie as an alternative to all the "serious" rap music (there it is), which is giving them too much credit; Sex Packets and 3 Feet High And Rising obviously had far more going for them than a vaguely elucidated aversion to gangsta shit, and even though the duo intends "get up and dance" music, the actual result is more liable to put a pep in your step as you take a post-lunch scroll through the internet's finer hip-hop blogs. Nonetheless, * YB&KS* is as much a tribute to the more playful forms of rap as it is a contribution to its survival, and it's hard to argue that the two fail to fulfill their modest ambitions.
