| Three colorful bolts of lightning strike across the cover of The Weather, serving as a dual metaphor for the album's title and the three distinct participants aspiring to unite within. It's an album chock full of free association, wacky metaphors, beats realized through children's toys and household appliances, nursery rhymes, distorted facades, whistling and gargling solos (seriously), and an abundance of excess, all done with no regrets. If none of this scares you, then read on. To put it simply, The Weather is a unique experience, one that further distorts current notions of hip-hop music and its direction, but what else can you expect from the trio of Busdriver, Radioinactive, and producer Daedelus? The Weather is certainly not void of amazing pieces. "Carl Weathers" is one of the album's more incredible moments, a track which starts off in twang and develops into a steady emo-hop style beat. It's an exercise in free-for-all as Busdriver and Radioinactive trade rapid-fire verses, occasionally coming together in awkward fashion, but when the groove finally settles, it's absolutely jaw dropping (at which point the included lyric sheet will undoubtedly be needed). Even the initially annoying "Fine for a Robot" yields ephemeral pleasures, which sees Busdriver doing his best Sinatra impersonation and Radioinactive in conventional rap mode. Here their efforts avoid collision, and the gargling solo at the track's end is something that everyone will want to check out. So perhaps Daedelus makes the most memorable contributions on The Weather, a relative newcomer to hip-hop, but somewhat of a musical prodigy given the fact that he's signed to Scott Heron's Eastern Development. His production is delicately crafted, weaving stories that will likely go unnoticed beneath the two in the spotlight above, but when given the chance to shine, he is a master of moments. Finely tuned segments float through one another, one segueing into the next, BPMs constantly shifting, and sometimes falling out altogether to spontaneously reveal those underneath. It is an exciting and interesting endeavor, one that adds a significant amount of flavor to the project. Take his instrumental offering "Break for 2300," for example, starting with a typical boom bap section backed by a psychedelic horn, soon transforming into an arithmetic drum beat accompanied by paranoiac sounds only to shift back to its slightly energized predecessor. - Dusted |
2XLP/Out Of Print