| Hip-hop is 25 years old in 2004. That's if you make the starting point the 1979 releases of "King Tim III (Personality Jock)" by the Fatback band and "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang, rather than DJ Kool Herc's legendary South Bronx block parties some time in the early 70s, which we weren't invited to. Alternative hip-hop has existed since De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising beamed down upon a grateful world, back in the heady, hippy, housey days of 1988/9. And ever since then, every now and again, alt-hop (sorry, but some wiseguy has already used trip-hop) produces something as lovely as... um... "Dead Dogs Two." No, stick with me. I really do mean lovely. San Francisco's cLOUDDEAD are rappers Doseone and why? and samplemeister odd nosdam and - horror! - they are white and middle class. Their new single is sort of alternative (again) road song. As a churchy, scratchy organ drones and Indian percussion pitters, Doseone and why? drive by two dead dogs in a field by a Californian highway. Except they're not dead; indeed, the two dogs rise up and inflate their chests "like men on the beach being photographed." The rappers go on to sing-talk a poetic rumination on death and why "we secretly long to be some part of a car crash" - why, in effect, we humans are so keen to see blood and feel horror, even where none exists. Instead of coming off rock-boy morbid or deliberately obscure, this is dreamy, optimistic pop psychedelia. Which just happens to be the stock in trade of Scottish remixers Boards of Canada, who make "Dead Dogs Two" sweeter and funnier on what used to be called the B-side by chucking in the entire Beatles' Book of Trippy Tricks. A bid for prog-rap world domination? Nah. cLOUDDEAD have already split up, and insist that their forthcoming second album, Ten, will be their last. - The Observer |
1XEP/Out Of Print