If reading rap-related internet message boards has taught us anything (aside from how to wildly and inaccurately judge a person's character based on their record collection), it's that you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who'll go to bat for De La Soul, G-Unit, and the rap career of WWE wrestler John Cena in equal measure. But Seattle-based producer Jake One actually did beats for all of them, and the further you go into his résumé, the more confounding it gets: last year alone he contributed beats to Young Buck's thugged-out Buck the World, Lifesavas' conscious-rap concept album Gutterfly and Turf Talk's hyphy hit West Coast Vaccine (The Cure). But can a producer who's that versatile and mercenary manage to come up with an album's worth of beats that coheres enough to give you a one-shot sense of what it is he actually does stylistically?
Turns out that he can, if White Van Music is any indication. The good thing about Jake One cultivating such a diverse Rolodex is that he works like he's broken every stylistic and regional niche into its compound elements. The way the beat knocks is priority-- typified by densely-packed drums and thick, skulking basslines-- while everything else he incorporates, from simple piano and synth loops to shards of melodic vocal snippets to heavy funk guitar, is just there to be ushered along by the rhythm. There's enough diversity of mood from track to track-- foreboding gospel soul, spy-flick twang, slow-rolling electric-piano iciness-- but it's all tied together using that elemental 85-95 BPM 4/4 rhythmic backbone that anyone from any scene can rock over.
And if you want a litmus test or two, he's brought on a ridiculously wide range of regional voices to prove he can back up damn near anyone's lyrics. This lineup almost looks like the names brought up in an unusually open-minded rap fan's shuffle mode: MF Doom muttering intricately blunted phraseology ("Trap Door", which boasts the aforementioned 007 vibe) followed up by Young Buck sneering workmanlike death threats (vague David Banner homage "Dead Wrong"), a lyrical contortionist's field day in an Elzhi/Royce Da 5'9" Detroit double-feature (the gleaming, brassy soul of "Glow") delivered after a slow-spitting showcase for the gravel-voiced hyphy pioneer Keak da Sneak (the sparsely twinkling "Soil Raps"), Dilla-heir Black Milk and neo-g-funk vet Nottz put together on the same track ("I'm Coming") just because they were two of Jake's favorite rapping producers. ("Maybe if I wasn't a terrible rapper I would have done a verse too," he jokes in the liner notes.)
That kitchen-sink approach also makes for a couple inspired team-ups, even if two of the best ones were thrown together after the fact: Freeway recorded his verse for "The Truth" in the unfulfilled hopes that Jay-Z and Kanye would show up, and Jake One plugged in a blazing verse from Brother Ali instead; an unused beat meant for Nas ("Oh Really") got turned over to Posdnous from De La and had a typically smart-assed verse from Slug appended to it. And even if Prodigy's verse on "White Van" only lasts about twenty seconds, hearing him on the same track as Alchemist and Evidence means that tenuous connection between Dilated Peoples and Mobb Deep gets a little more solidified.
The flaw with White Van Music is that the lineup of lyricists just about guarantees that most heads will run across at least one track featuring an MC they can't stand. But the quality of the beats easily overcomes the somewhat odd novelty of hearing backpackers in close quarters with hardcore rappers, and with each listen it starts feeling more and more natural to have an all-star CD where M.O.P. and Little Brother both have hot tracks. Jake One isn't a household name-- yet-- and his beats might not be instantly recognizable as the work of a singular visionary, but if he can get all these disparate artists under the same roof and come out of it with a consistently enjoyable album, he's pulled off a hell of a feat nonetheless
