REVIEWS
Busdriver
Cosmic Cleavage
(Big Dada/Ninja Tune)
As an emotional defense, density beats machismo hands-down. Nobody can
see your weak spots if you move too fast and deluge them with so much
verbiage that the Freudian slips and incidental confessions are hidden
by the onslaught. Busdriver talks about the trials of L.A. life,
divorced parents and bad breakups, but he slides on without a pause; the
listener's too busy with the form to feel the content. He changes the
subject before you can even give him a simple, "That's a bummer, dude."
Listening to a Busdriver album is like getting rhymes out of a fire
hydrant. That's not a criticism: His hyperactive flow and
hyperarticulate assertions are pure pleasure, and so is his delivery,
where he's made leaps in technique since his earliest CD-Rs. He stomps
and sputters in (mostly self-)frustration, and his stentorian voice
lurches in tempo and pitch; one minute he gulps his lines like a fish,
the next, he spits out lyrics like nails.
Humor and vivid disgust weave together in his lyrics, which are
convoluted and cliche-free: "Falling in love in L.A./Is like being
pricked with a manicured thorn/Innocent girls who look like they used
to star in amateur porn/One financial disaster, an exotic dancer is
born." And the intensity comes and goes. His rant at his ex on "She-Hulk
Dehorning the Illusionist" is hilarious ("Somehow I've weaved the myth
of a decent person around your good looks"), and becomes world-class
caustic even before he hits the kiss-off: "You have a playful fetish of
having your anal crevice rammed in by a four-door sedan full of football
players."
Producer Daddy Kev sticks to jazz breaks, from swing to stride to cool
to modern, with drumming that propels Busdriver's stumbling tempos, and
raunchy horns that mimic the swing of his third leg. Though the dustier
breaks bring up unwelcome echoes of "Lucas With The Lid Off," Kev rarely
leans on his sources for nostalgic ear candy. Dig the way he turns the
upright bass into a throbbing, almost electronic pulse on "Beauty Supply
and Demand", or the way he fits the burlesque of the title track to the
gutter-probing lyrics.
With no breaks or gasps for air between the tracks, Cosmic Cleavage is
Busdriver's tightest, most consistent album. But it might not be the
best starting place for new listeners. It's not as obviously clever (or
corny) as his collaboration with Radioinactive and Daedelus, The
Weather, and it's harder to penetrate than his full-length debut,
Temporary Forever. One of the most effective tracks on that record was a
tape recording of Busdriver freestyling at the order booth of a fast
food drive-thru. From the passenger seat, we got to hear Busdriver take
a breath before he went back to be the life of the party again.
Without rests like that, Cosmic Cleavage has the whirlwind "watch what I
can do" pace of an EP, and as it reaches the final track, the density
threatens to make it collapse on itself: The thudding, slow bass guitar
and jabbing keyboards melt into a hot mass, and Busdriver drops out
altogether. Like that scene at the end of The Black Hole, we're trapped
by the gravitational pull -- what'll we find on the other side? The
meaning of life? The answer to our voyage? God? -- but when we break
through to the end, all we get is a titty joke sampled from an old
Seinfeld episode. Busdriver, you got away from us again. -- Pitchfork Media
Big Dada venture further "out there" than ever before with an album
that's like a screwball comedy scripted by Kafka, hosted by an LA rapper
who's frighteningly drunk and shouting nonsense in your ear in a shower
of spittle. You soon give up trying to suck any sort of sense out of
this Cosmic Cleavage, since this is "acid jazz" in a literally
hallucinogenic sense, with beats and rhymes that suggest Busdriver have
been eating far too much cheese before bedtime. -- Paul Clarke, BBC
As quirky as Madlib's Quasimoto and as zany as The Pharcyde's Fatlip,
Busdriver is the new voice of Left Coast hip hop. His records form a
universe as strung-out and as sprawling and confusing as his native
La-La Land and is as much a figment of its own imagination. Loopy tales
with moral standing sketch out a backdrop on which he vocally scribbles
social commentaries. Like when he compares falling in love in LA with
being pricked by a manicured thorn and how people idolize and fantasize
about four-door sedans full of football players. The rhymes are on a
par of their own and there's a spontaneity and humor that surpasses the
regular satire born from other products of the Goodlife Cafe's open-mic
sessions. The beats, supplied by Daddy Kev and D-Styles, are typically
Californian in a bright and sunny way, often slipping into free-jazz
break downs, which is obviously much less typically Californian. And
that's what is so captivating about Busdriver's music: anything can
happen. -- Paris Voice
A scion of the underground Los Angeles rap scene that spawned The
Pharcyde, Jurassic 5 and Freestyle Fellowship, Busdriver has an
engagingly laconic world-view, to which he gives voice with a hurriedly
garbled delivery, like some street crazy letting out his demons through
a warped soliloquy, stretching and squeezing lines to fit the
jazz-sample grooves of Daddy Kev and D-Styles. The effect is akin to
waves of cars stopping and starting in traffic jams, Busdriver's
gridlocked syllables nudging one another's fenders in their rush to
break free.
As "Rap Sucks" suggests, he regards his art with a certain ambivalence;
but then, he seems ambivalent about pretty much everything,
particularly the women he vainly pursues in tracks such as "Unnecessary
Thinking" and "She-Hulk Dehorning the Illusionist," a dinner-date
débâcle summed up in the lines: "Somehow I've weaved a myth of a decent
person around your good looks/But you've got the sense of a diet
cookbook." The familiar samples of Deodato and Duke Ellington smooth
the passage of Busdriver's berserk raps, but it's still a bumpy ride;
though only half an hour long, these 12 tracks leave the listener just
as sated as the usual 70 minutes from more routine rappers.
-- Andy Gill, The Independent (UK)
Big Dada really have their bases covered. As if their monopoly on the
sharpest new hip-hop-orientated music wasn't already felt, this new bomb
by Busdriver really adds to their payload.
Cosmic Cleavage is a short, sharp serving of cartoon-noir rap cabaret.
Daddy Kev's beats seem to sample almost exclusively from big band jazz,
though not at all in a "playful" Ninja Tune way, or in a religious DJ
Spooky way -- instead, their surreal, eerily humorous effect seems to be
completely intentional. In the meantime, Busdriver delivers quick and
tangled rhymes in an unmistakable deep voice, with as little
consideration for traditional rap rhythms as Dose One and with a charisma
that Beans can only dream of. Vitally, Busdriver avoids any
over-extended metaphors or complex abstractions. In fact, the most
confusing thing about his vocals is surely their delivery, which varies
at a rate of a few seconds from rubbery sing-song to double-time abandon
and back again.
The tracks flow into one another like a quick-fire vaudeville act, so it
isn't until the Daddy Kev-dominated jam track "Staring At The Sun" that
the record gives any hint of winding down. In just under half an hour,
it's thrilling but over before you know it.
I have no idea what those most anal of hiphop purists will make of
Cosmic Cleavage, but personally the fuck-it spirit is a big draw. And
although the track Rap Sucks is misleadingly titled -- it's more of a
self-referential mantra than a statement of intent -- regardless, there's
no despicable or precious true-school aspirations here at all. Instead,
Cosmic Cleavage is a modern rap-influenced album that everyone can enjoy
without feeling like they're receiving a thesis on hip-hop or against it.
Busdriver's gonna take the kids to school. -- DOT:ALT Magazine
Coming out of the same autistically charged LA Underground scene of the
Goodlife Cafe, Busdriver is an addition to the established talents of
Pharcyde, Jurassic 5, Abstract Rude and Awol One.
Busdriver's album Cosmic Cleavage is a distinctive album that has
coasted off from typical hip hop by using jazz, down tempo, classical,
and good old 1950's sounds, mixed in with some radio-style social
commentary lyrics. This album could be compared to Ugly Duckling in
terms of its lyric style, but when time is taken to listen, it will also
rouse your mind into recalling sounds vaguely like so many other echoes
and hums, that direct examples cannot be precisely isolated.
Being original in this saturated day in age is rare, and this is an
album which should be highly commended for doing so. If you are mentally
astute, the lyrics are smart - pay attention. You would really have to
be autistic or a bus driver in LA to come up with these bizarre and
provoking librettos. For those of you at the end of the long work day
who cannot muster up the brain power to listen quite that closely, the
prevailing background beats will keep you as equally entertained.
Busdriver is so impressive that r4nt gives it an enthusiastic approval.
Pick up a copy for yourself. Enjoy some well laid out turntable-isms
from a voice and mind which is widely dynamic. -- r4nt
Giving it to you in emotional spew, Los Angelean hip-hop hero and
Project Blowed graduate Busdriver sounds less like he's taking you to
school and more like he's forever delivering a punch-line. Bringing
unlikely theatrickality to jazz-sampling west-coast underground hip-hop,
Busdriver makes like some sort of mugging comedian in vocal tones
borrowed from a 1950s radio-show, going for the Lynchian
absurdist-comedy jugular with his jocular, jazzy, jaw-dropping
nimble-tongued/half-sung delivery. Setting this, entirely, to the
swinging-for-the-fences-of-the-swing-era productions of Daddy Kev and
D-Styles -- cut-ups which cascade clamorous piano chords, virtuoso
double-bass wankery, and cymbal splashing daddio-drums -- Busdriver
sounds like a beat-poet evoking a scatting jazz-vocalist, spitting out
syllables from a mouth shooting-off with rapid-fire machine-gunning
prohibition-era percussiveness. But rather than reducing voice to
meaningless baby-talk so as to turn it into a rhythmic instrument, when
you get beneath the blurred words, you find out he's rattling out
carefully-cultivated free-associated rhymes; in one memorable sitting
spitting out, in the rapidest rapid-fire: "and you treat dinner dates
like fucking table-tennis/your fucking navel's endless/and it leads to a
corridor/and you've got a playful fetish/of having your anal
crevice/rammed in/by a four-door sedan/of football players." Lyrically,
that's par for the course for Cosmic Cleavage, a thematic (cum concept
(cum cum-concept?)?) record largely dealing in Busdriver's
side-splitting misadventures with women, and how they've tended to get
the best of him; a true-life tale of
to-live-and-love-and-lose-and-be-a-loser-in-LA; the lyricist thinking he
does too much "unnecessary thinking" to get himself any of that "hairy
pink thing". He knocks all this endless hilarious riffing and
off-the-wall wackiness out in under half-an-hour, too; an almost
unbelievable swiftness in the bloated world of hip-hop discs; the
29-minute running-time even padded out with 6-minutes of instrumental
free-jazz pastiche-ing to bring things to a close. Case closed.
-- Gravity Girl
This is at least the fourth album from the LA rapper Busdriver, but the
first album to have a fair shot of capturing a slice of the avant rap
pie, post Clouddead. Last heard (if you we're lucky enough) on the
Weather album (Mush) with Radioinactive and Daedelus this album also
feels like a continuation of the Awol One & Daddy Kev project
Slanguage also on Mush, no surprise then that D-Styles is behind the
decks (sickness guaranteed) and the master Daddy Kev is on the boards.
For some in the know the wild vocals of Busdriver can grate a little,
an epitome of hyperactive rap but here his natural character shines
through and the music is amazing. A total avant garde meets modal jazz
blast, D-Styles drops some sick routines and the sample based music is
the sh*t. Twelve tracks in total with the final inst track "Staring At
The Sun" being the ultimate winner, probably the finest hip hop meets
free jazz track yet dropped. Another welcome surprise from Big Dada.
Cold check. -- Boomkat
The new album called Cosmic Cleavage from Big Dada Recordings contains
twelve tracks of inspirational bliss. With deranged rhythms and Jazz
infused melodies, it takes modern day contemporary music to a higher
level. The rhymes barely make sense, and yet still remain enlightening.
The instruments do nothing, yet cover everything and fulfil a mission.
The tracks have amazing depth and feeling, making the CD a must-have,
for every late-night-lover.
To look up the meaning of the word "creative" in the Oxford English
dictionary, you'll find it is to create something of nothing. Modern day
creativity is simply a combination of previous ideas, put together in a
form that's not been done before. Thus, you get Busdriver.
Extremely creative and highly appealing, to any aspiring DJ or Artist. -- BogsDollocks.net
Of all the gleefully idiosyncratic MCs to burst from the US in recent
years, LA's Busdriver possesses surely one of the most preposterous
deliveries, coming on like the Scatman John of alt-hop with his
jelly-octaved tenor and latex-lipped linguistics (conveniently, his
name is actually John). Cosmic Cleavage, his first effort for Big Dada,
displays a particularly pronounced jazz/bebop influence in keeping with
the tradition of the label's parent, Ninja Tune; clipped, squawking
trumpet loops and boomingly resonant double bass lines abound, and the
mood veers between the sort of prolix playfulness previously endemic in
his work with Radioinactive and Daedelus as The Weather ("Nagging
Nimbus," "Kev's Blistering Computer Tan..."), and a more foreboding,
uncertain mood, at which points one can almost sense producer Daddy Kev
wrenching Busdriver from the wheel and steering the record off sharp
left in his own avant-jazz gear. As has been noted elsewhere, any
comparison with Doseone, beyond ostensible stylistic resemblance,
misses the mark; Busdriver's lyrical concerns remain largely
unrefracted by the sort of relentless abstract imagery and periodically
impenetrable surrealist melancholy the Anticon mainstay trades in;
plainly speaking, once you get the measure of his breathless bleatings,
it's fairly easy to gauge what this fellow is on about (one of the many
perverse pleasures of Dose being, to quote a less desirable American
orator, that sense he conveys of the known unknown). At under half an
hour, Cosmic Cleavage is laudably snipped short of overkill, and the
finale of the album is arguably it's most diverting phase; an
unsettling, discordant melange of loose jazz instrumentation recalling
the eye of a moderately tempestuous Sun Ra storm, with nary a peep to
be heard from the principle vocal protagonist. Such worthy restraint,
along with the adroit selection of musical associates that adorn Cosmic
Cleavage make it worthy of inspection for followers of Big Dada's more
outré output, who will surely be encouraged, having been left stranded
so cruelly by cLOUDDEAD, that the label has hitched a ride with
Busdriver. -- themilkfactory.co.uk
Hip-hop music, but not as we know it.
You know what, as strange as this album may sound to some people, it
sits comfortably alongside label mate cLOUDEAD's recent album, Ten.
Both artists have chosen hip-hop as the artform to express themselves,
and both have rewritten the rules of the genre and created challenging,
imaginitive and enjoyable albums. The most notable difference is that
cLOUDEAD opted for the surreal electronic approach to the genre,
Busdriver have opted to talk the jazz route.
The title track, "Cosmic Cleavage," stands out for me. It features, what
seems to be, a 1930's jazz sample, strangely reminiscent of the
soundtrack from Illusion Softworks PC game, Mafia. D-Styles cuts in a
horn sample and ushers in the downtempo beat. Then Busdriver messes with
time signature rapping under and over the beat, providing texture to the
minimalist production.
The vocal styling throughout the album is striking and something to take
note of. Busdriver has a seemingly limitless lung capacity, allowing for
some awe inspiring vocal delivery. Add to that, the sheer inventiveness
and creativity of the rhymes and you have yourself a winning formula.
Track One, "Pool Drowning," has Busdriver competing with himself in a what
seems like a strange solo-duet!
"Staring At The Sun," is epic in proportion at just over 6 minutes,
compared to the rest of the album. Most of the other tracks breeze by in
a matter of minutes. So this track takes it time to build, venturing
into the realms of free-jazz. It reminds me of a Art Ensemble Of Chicago
track that never existed. Excellent stuff.
Turntablist D-Styles, of Invisbl Skratch Piklz and the Beat Junkies
provides some precision cuts and scratches throughout, adding to the
jazz theme of the album. Some consider turntablists to be the jazz
musicians of our generation, so he doesn't feature on the album as
merely dressing, but forms rhythmic back bones for some of the more
adventurous tracks.
If you're a fan of Hip-Hop and want to see what the genre can offer up
when in the hands of someone truly unique, then look no more. A perfect
mixture of humour, social commentary and snappy jazz breaks. -- The Beat Surrender
Los Angeles native Busdriver emerged from the same underground LA hip-hop
scene orbiting around the celebrated Goodlife Café that also nurtured
the early careers of such well-known names as Freestyle Fellowship, The
Pharcyde and Jurassic 5. Busdriver's 2002 self-released debut album
Temporary Forever first introduced his distinctive jazz-skat
influenced MC style to an underground US hiphop audience and was closely
followed by a full-length collaborative album with producers Daedalus
and Radioinactive as The Weather, that was released through Mush in
2003 to widespread acclaim.
Busdriver certainly loves collaboration -- in the past he's worked with
the likes of Aceyalone, Abstract Rude, Mikah-9 and Omid to name but a
few, and for Cosmic Cleavage (his first album on Big Dada), he's
joined forces with uber-respected LA producer Daddy Kev (who released
the storming free-jazz tinged Slanguage in 2002) and Invizibl Skratch
Piklz / Beat Junkies member D-Styles on turntables. Based around the
topic of the constant perils of relationships in the City Of Angels,
perhaps the best way to describe listening to Cosmic Cleavage is in a
nutshell, like tumbling half blind out of a bar onto the seamy streets
of La-La-Land with a friend who somehow gets even more eloquent the more
he gets drunk, the entire experience drifting by in a slightly surreal
dreamy blur of abstract beats and addled jazz flourishes, Busdriver's
curious scat-style syncopated rhymes detailing stories of where he
seriously jumped the shark in terms of his chances of pulling.
Opening with eerie Cinematic Orchestra-esque brush drums and harp runs,
Busdriver intones "Move Part A to Part Z" and then a loping hip-hop drum
beat and clavinet organ kick in on 'Pool Drowning', Busdriver's curious
nasal boom-bap MC style calling to mind a more jazz-inflected and less
hoarse version of Doseone. "Nagging Nimbus" rides a swinging jazz groove
topped with double bass and splashing cymbals, with Busdriver
negotiating some incredibly-dextrous syncopated rhymes, packing an
unfeasible amount of syllables into each bar, before Cosmic Cleavage
introduces the guest MC vocals of Awol One (recent guest on Slanguage)
over a weird wheezing backdrop of looped clarinets and horns, Busdriver
detailing the fast fall of a smalltown girl into the seedy sidelines of
LA ("Innocent girls who look like they used to star in amateur porn /
One financial disaster/An exotic dancer is born").
"Kev's Blistering Computer Tan and Driver's Rapper's Rapper Moniker" is
one of the definite standout moments on this album with Busdriver
turning his rhymes up to overdrive over a backdrop of what almost sounds
like a shifted ragtime sample, D-Styles adding furious turntable
scratches over the addictive chorus. "Unnecessary Thinking" features the
guest vocals of Abstract Rude alongside Busdriver's slightly seedy
rhymes, which seem to be about the reasons why getting a hooker is less
stress than trying to pick someone up, while "Beauty Supply And Demand"
continues in a related relationships subject, and is this album's token
ex-girlfriend kiss-off song (Bus even pretty much introduces it as
such), but offers an intriguing sonic diversion, winding Bus' almost
chanted rhymes over a springing slap bassline that could have come from
Primus' Les Claypool.
"She-Hulk Dehorning The Illusionist" shows Bus getting figuratively
emasculated by the opposite sex, but he still manages to get some
classic one-two jazz punches in there, including the classic "and you
treat dinner dates like f**king table tennis/ your f**king navel is
endless"), before instrumental segue "Stride Pianist Penis Envy" cut-ups
up a loop of a guy talking about "Writing chaos/morning chaos/midnight chaos"
over a plinking piano loop and loping beats, closing
with a hilarious sample of what sounds like an elderly Indian man saying
"I don't like it so much as it's so artsy-fartsy/What I like is the
real shit." "Purple Schards" is one of the most hilarious and lyrically
elaborate songs about breasts that I've heard for some time, leading
into the ironic anti-scenester hater anthem "Rap Sucks" that injects
just the right level of deadpan knowingness ("I don't spend hours
writing sappy poems in it's name/OK maybe I do") into Bus's
hyperactive syllables over a grooving plucked bass.
Finally, sprawling instrumental "Staring At The Sun" (practically an
epic by the standards of this album, standing at six minutes compared to
the two minute and under running time of most tracks here) takes things
out into very similar territory to that explored recently by Big Dada
labelmate Diplodocus, with live electric guitars and bass ringing
through delayed-out drumrolls and cut-up spoken samples taken from what
sounds like a 1950s schoolbus driver instructional tape. Pretty soon,
the drums and distorted guitar riffs have built up in intensity, sudden
organ stabs cutting across the beats like a slasher and the entire track
flames out in a massive psyche-rock peak, D-Styles' adept cuts slicing
through scratched free jazz horns, in a track that almost brings to mind
a hiphop-tinged Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Cosmic Cleavage is a stunning album from Busdriver which shows his
distinctive skewed jazz-skat MC style fusing perfectly with Daddy Kev's
vivid and imaginative beats (that manage to take some of the free-jazz
templates explored on Slanguage even further) and D-Style's turntable
dexterity. While Bus' skatting syllable-packed vocal style may be an
acquired taste for some, anyone on the same sort of wavelength as
Anticon or Clouddead is going to love this -- these are lush beat
soundscapes designed for Bus to use as his verbal jungle-gym. Cosmic
Cleavage also neatly avoids some of the awkward misanthropic traps that
Atmosphere's recent album fell into simply because of the wry ironic
tone that permeates throughout -- Bus is having a knowing laugh in every
rhyme, but this is still heartfelt stuff. And coming in at a total of 12
tracks a smidge under half an hour, it's perfect for the bus home. But
remember not to distract the driver. -- ITM (InTheMix)
OK, to say this release is slightly off centre would be an
understatement, but (and there is a big but here) this is an extremely
varied and interesting album. Busdriver lyrically is quite an enigma, an
on-beat off-beat/harmonious style is the loosest and best explanation
that I can give, although don't be fooled by complexity this is stella
stuff like.
Daddy Kev supplies the beats and for those that don't know these are
some weird old beats but he makes them damn funky that's for sure. I
personally rate the album on a whole. It's a refreshing sound and has
elements of comedy, social comment, and straight up lunacy.
Busdriver is honest in his approach to his rhymes on this album and this
comes across when you listen to it. I get a sense of human nature from
it due to the subject matter and that makes for interesting listening in
my opinion. Granted it may not be to everyones liking but it gets my
thumbs up, If you are looking for something that's a little different
then get a look at Busdriver's Cosmic Cleavage, it's a proper
corker. -- Glass, BritishHipHop.com
There have been plenty of approaches to hip-hop jazz, from Stetsasonic's
Talkin All That Jazz (which, let's face it, didn't have much to do with
jazz), through Guru's Jazzmatazz project, which slipped deeper into an
R&B mire with each album, to The Roots' innovative if ultimately
limited live sound. While other approaches haven't gone crazy on the
improvisational, modal nature of the music, something of that spirit
survives in Daddy Kev's production. His most successful tracks here
retain an experimental quality without sounding like unfinished
exercises, and manage to be willfully cool and kooky without irritating.
Where this balance does exist, it's noticeable precisely because he
doesn't quite pull it off every time.
Kev has a good ear for hooks, rarely ruining them with unnecessary
mucking about. The title track in particular reflects this, its appeal
obvious to friends of the Ninja family, with a trumpet only marginally
less drunk than Kid Koala's. Rather than borrowing individual jazz
instrument sounds like recent Ninja release Blockhead, Daddy Kev keeps
more of a jazz form, combining rap's drums and bass where it suits him
rather than taking its traditional break loops as his template. This is
evident on tracks like "Nagging Nimbus," which comes on like a hip-hop
re-imagining of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five." While continuing his own work
from the Slanguage album Kev occasionally sounds like other genre
muddlers as well. "Pool Drowning" for example, has something Beckish
about it, and comparisons have been made with other leftfield and
independent artists, like the Clouddead boys.
Busdriver too, for all his weirdness, is undisputedly one among a number
of wacky rappers. His humour doesn't quite cross the Atlantic intact,
but its antecedents can be found on records by Biz Markie, mock
misogynistic Miami bass crews, and Del at his 'if you must' comic
oddest. He's paralleled in the U.K. by Parlour Talk, and the U.S. by
Pigeon John. If the free jazz business doesn't make you think 'hey, these
guys are crazy,' Busdriver's vocal stylings will. The pitch of his voice
shifts up and down wildly, as if he's rhyming while trying to stay
upright on a recalcitrant seesaw, and he speeds and slows his slur
unpredictably to make his cadences attack the beats right. The words
themselves don't necessarily map onto the rhythm though, and with too
many syllables deliberately shoehorned into lines, meaning often loses
out to sound. Of course this all adds to the weirdness, which does seem
to be the point. The tracks have titles like "She-Hulk Dehorning The
Illusionist" and "Stride-Pianist Penis-Envy," and when the lyrics can be
made out, they say things like "Wowee look at that, the suicide princess
enters the sky..." Because of all this, Cosmic Cleavage is always in
danger of being one of those novelty hip-hop records. Originally made as
a soundtrack, maybe it gets away with being a concept album, touched
with the sort of musical and lyrical comic camp that Andre 3000 does a
little better and with more popular appeal. -- Musicalbear
Many people will dislike Busdriver's unique flow, but one thing that
can't be denied is that when the L.A. native's on the mike, it's never
a dull moment. After his under-underground 2002 debut, Temporary
Forever, gained recognition for his unique style, Busdriver hooked up
last year with Daedelus and Radioinactive for The Weather, a project
that was just as enjoyable, even if it was what it seemed: a bunch of
talented guys screwing around.
Cosmic Cleavage is jump up musically from his debut, but it continues
where the jazz soloist of emcees left off with his early records.
Working with Daddy Kev to create some of the best jazz hip-hop beats in
a while and using the deck talents of legend-in-waiting D-Styles of the
defunct Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Busdriver runs all over the scales,
raising and lowering his modulation and slurring, spitting and running
through couplets without so much as a breath. It's an enviable
performance, and while the playfulness of his voice might be mistaken
as novelty by some, listeners that dig the weirder side of hip-hop will
be impressed.
The title track is the template for the rest of the record, both
musically and lyrically. Old ragtime horns give way to a bouncingly
drunk drum beat and Busdriver's sexual musings. The record is so
unapologetically immature in its sex references (at one point this
"fuck buddy of the universe" tries to get more of "that hairy pink
thing") that you can't fault it for the sophomoric humor.
"Stingey Lover," "Unnecessary Thinking" and "She-Hulk Dehorning the
Illusionist" continue that tradition. But in contrast to some of the
dry performances of today -- where even the brilliant flows MF Doom
provides on the Madvillain record have a healthy dose of detachment --
it's refreshing to hear such a devoted (and accomplished) delivery.
What Busdriver is saying doesn't matter nearly as much as what he
sounds like, particularly up against the album's excellent production.
Put the best songs on the album next to Coltrane or Gangstarr on your
next mix: it will hold up equally well in both cases.
But even if the music itself is excellent, the record's negatives are
too important to ignore. Cosmic Cleavage is only thirty minutes long,
and when one track, the excellent abstract finale "Staring at the Sun,"
takes up six and a half minutes, it's a questionable length for an LP.
And his timing is off. Cosmic Cleavage is a solid disc, but placed next
to recent releases like Murs, Madvillain, Cee-Lo and the somewhat
similar performance Lyrics Born gave on his debut last year, the record
doesn't measure up in almost every way.
Still, this has been an excellent year for hip-hop, and the fact that
this worthy record isn't near the top of the pack is a good indication
of that. Also, bonus points for the Seinfeld sample at the end:
"Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun." -- Matthew Gasteier, Prefix
IN FRENCH: Depuis quelques temps, on ne reconnaît plus Daddy Kev. Fondateur à la
fin des années 90 de la maison Celestial et du label Vortex Recordings,
le californien aux multiples casquettes (producteur, mixing engineer,
designer...), alter ego régulier d'Awol One (avec qui il a notamment
cosigné les classiques Souldoubt et Number 3 On The
Phone), rouage essentiel de la machine westcoast underground (par
son hyperactivité et son ubiquité, voyez plutôt) a, comme qui dirait,
entamé un virage artistique. Et ce depuis Slanguage, énième
collaboration avec le shapeshifter Awol One sur laquelle il inaugurait,
l'an dernier, sa nouvelle panoplie d'explorateur jazz-rap, épaulé par
l'inclassable turntablist D-Styles.
Comme pour confirmer cette métamorphose, Kev récidivait quelques mois
plus tard avec Sound Advice, petite pièce expérimentale concoctée avec
The Grouch (et toujours D-Styles), qui dépassait son prédécesseur par
une meilleure répartition des rôles (sur Slanguage, Awol One brillait
par sa transparence), un contenu bien plus dense (le tout était
concentré sur 11 plages) et une alchimie plus convaincante. Nous étions
donc en droit d'attendre beaucoup de ce Cosmic Cleavage, annoncé depuis
plusieurs mois et édité en février dernier par les européens de Big
Dada.
Il faut dire que Busdriver, invité par Daddy Kev sur cette nouvelle
galette, nous apparaissait comme le MC le plus à même de mettre en
valeur les expérimentations d'un producteur en pleine transmutation.
D'autant que, depuis l'enthousiasmant Temporary Forever et plus encore
après le séminal The Weather, le fantasque et imprévisible Busdriver
semble inébranlable. D'ailleurs, aucun auditeur de bonne foi et doté
d'appendices auditifs en état de marche ne devrait remettre en cause le
talent du MC angelino après l'écoute de ce Cosmic Cleavage. Car, comme
sur son dernier solo et les productions compliquées de Daedelus qui
parsemaient les plages de The Weather, Busdriver est irréprochable,
toujours armé de son flow acrobatique et extensible, de ses rimes
tentaculaires et de ses punchlines à rallonge.
La prestation de Daddy Kev n'est pas aussi inattaquable. Délaissant les
expérimentations electro-jazz-rap qui ponctuaient Sound Advice au profit
d'un jazz souvent feutré et trop moelleux ("Nagging Nimbus") ; préférant
les boucles vieillottes ("Unnecessary Thinking") au free jazz
avant-gardiste de certaines plages de l'opus précédent ("Dollars For
Not"), Kev ne convainc que très rarement, s'appuyant le plus souvent sur
le potentiel du emcee convié pour tenir la baraque et éviter le
soporifique. On avait constaté une nette progression entre Slanguage et
Sound Advice dans la démarche de Daddy Kev, la plupart des
dysfonctionnements et anachronismes du premier ayant trouvé une réponse
avec le second. Mais l'irrégularité de ce nouveau volet nous amène à
nous interroger sur la nouvelle direction artistique de l'auteur de Lost
Angels. A moins que Cosmic Cleavage ait été enregistré avant la
collaboration avec The Grouch...
On notera malgré tout quelques bons moments; "Cosmic Cleavage" avec son
sample cartoonesque et son refrain chanté (en revanche, après de
multiples écoutes, je n'arrive toujours pas à comprendre la mention
"featuring Awol One"), "Beauty Supply And Demand" (qui doit beaucoup au
marathon de Busdriver, je vous l'accorde) et l'inspiré "Rap Sucks,"
l'une des rares compositions à la hauteur des élucubrations du MC: "I
don't love hip hop/I don't even like it/Let me break it down into its
smallest form for everyone in your college dorm/I don't love it/I
don't dedicate hours everyday to writing sappy poetry in its name/Okay,
maybe I do." Dans l'ensemble, l'apport de D-Styles (même si l'Invisibl
Scratch Pikl est moins présent que sur Slanguage) n'est pas négligeable,
l'auteur de Phantazmagorea allant même jusqu'à sauver quelques
productions du ravin ("Beauty Supply And Demand," "Stride Pianist Penis
Envy").
Au final, ce Cosmic Cleavage ne répond pas à toutes les attentes placés
en lui. Malgré un Busdriver toujours aussi habile et un D-Styles
entreprenant, il est trop inégal, parfois ennuyeux (pourtant, il ne dure
qu'une petite demie heure) et pointe du doigt les limites de la fusion
jazz-rap, genre que Daddy Kev ne paraît pas être en mesure de
révolutionner. -- HipHopCore.net
IN FRENCH: Pour peu que l'on maîtrise un minimum le verbe anglosaxon, la crème
verbale de Busdriver est un régal de fraîcheur lyrique. Et puisqu'on ne
se marre pas souvent dans le rap, il serait dommage de passer à côté de
ce long sketch multipiste qui flingue avec humour tout ce qui bouge dans
la grande tradition des dirty dozens et cache derrière sa potacherie une
réelle subversion. Si d'autres se sont déjà essayés à cette forme de rap
azimuté, Busdriver marque un point avec un paysage sonore inédit, gavé
de samples de jazz malicieusement grillés pour construire groove sur une
patte jubilatoire. -- Coca'Zine.com
IN FRENCH: On pourrait facilement reprocher à l'étiquette anglaise Big Dada
d'occulter le hip-hop britannique, ces derniers temps. Après avoir signé
les Français TTC, les Américains Clouddead, King Keedorah et NMS, la
division hip-hop de Ninja Tune recrute une star montante californienne:
Busdriver. Y a de quoi rechigner un peu. L'Angleterre regorge de talents
qui valent bien ceux de nos voisins du Sud. Big Dada devrait encourager
les rappeurs « locaux », comme elle l'a fait dans le passé avec Roots
Manuva, New Flesh For Old et Ty. Mais, admettons-le, ce serait se
plaindre le ventre terriblement plein. Issu du collectif Project Blowed,
sorte de vaste regroupement de MC qui s'est fait connaître dans les
années 1990 avec la compilation du même nom, Busdriver partage avec lui
une vision du hip-hop bien simple : faire différent. Sur Cosmic
Cleavage, où il est épaulé par le réalisateur Daddy Kev (sûrement le
meilleur beatmaker de l'underground californien) et par le turntablist
D-Style (des collectifs Invisibl Skratch Piklz et Beat Junkies), il
exploite un style définitivement jazz, souvent free jazz. D'autres l'ont
fait avant lui, mais aucun rappeur sur la terre ne semble pouvoir égaler
Busdriver en terme de personnalité. Sur ses sorties précédentes, il
avait habitué ses fans à un flow souvent très rapide, parfois chanté,
toujours incroyablement différent. Il réitère de belle façon sur Cosmic
Cleavage. Et ça fait plaisir. Surtout à ceux qui n'en peuvent plus des
rappeurs qui pensent avoir trouvé une recette pour rapper et qui se
copient eux-mêmes depuis dix ans. Aux autres qui ne voient pas à quel
genre de « recette » on peut bien faire allusion ici : oubliez ça, cet
album n'est pas pour vous. -- Julien Cayer, P45
IN FRENCH: Après avoir été remis en orbit avec Radioinactive sur The Weather,
Busdriver revient en tant que Big Dada soldier, épaulé du binôme
D-Styles Daddy Kev qu' on avait pu retrouver sur Sound Advice aux
côtés de The Grouch et surtout Temporary Forever.
On n'aime ou on n'aime pas le mc qui pourrait en saoûler plus d'un sur
la longueur d'un album, celui ci est très court, mais on ne peut pas
nier la musicalité de son flow dont les phases off beat étoffent les
instrumentaux smooth de Daddy Kev renouant avec le broken beat des vieux
classiques Project Blowed (les premiers FF, Aceyalone.. sur "Nagging
Nimbus" qui fait penser aux lives jazz de "Haïku d'Etat"). La
contrebasse mouvementée de "Beauty Supply And Demand" rappelant les
exercices de style de Gift Of Gab atteste encore de sa versatilité ne se
limitant pas au cliché haut débit, en s'accordant comme D-Styles à la
mélodie entêtante de "Kev's Blistering Computer.." scratchée en rythme
par le Beat Junkie, qui sans innover sur ce track prouve encore pouvoir
se détacher du registre murder music (également en rejouant les notes de
basse suivant la tonalité du piano jazzy de "Stride Pianist Penis Envy"
ou sur l'instrumental final qui rappelle les envolées ambiantes bien que
ça reste très creux musicalement). Même si certaines prods
lounge/classieuses peuvent s'avérer pénibles, l'identité jazz de Daddy
Kev déjà développée sur Slanguage colle bien à l' univers be bop du mc
se servant de sa voix comme Miles Davis, John Hendricks ou D-Styles le
font via leurs instruments respectifs, la technique de ce dernier y
étant toujours plus efficiente quand elle est aussi subtile que sur les
leads de cuivre de Cosmic Cleavage et de "The Hulk Dehorning The
Illusionist" (le sommet de l'album laissant le champ libre aux
punchlines en syncopes du Bus). -- 90BPM
IN GERMAN: An kosmischen Spalten hat die Westküste ja genug zu bieten, allen voran
den Sankt Andreasgraben. Und auch bei Busdriver weiß man nicht genau,
was denn jetzt so kosmisch ist an »Cosmic Cleavage«. Vielleicht die
Risse der Gesellschaft in L.A. Denn »Cosmic Cleavage« sollte der
Soundtrack werden zu einem Film über die Stadt. Die Bilder wurden
letztlich nie produziert. Doch diese Platte hier reicht reichlich.
Lebhaft ist das MCing des Busdriver; über nervös
zusammengeschnippselten, offensichtlich aus viel altem Bop-Zeug
hergesampelten Beats spricht, singt, deklamiert dieser Typ, bis man sich
in einer Comedy-Show wähnt, wie man sie sich immer schon gewünscht hat.
Hinter beinah jede Silbe setzt er noch einen Lufthauch, und Busdriver
gibt sich nicht gerade silbenfaul: Die Hektik wird mit diesen Raps erst
so richtig hergestellt. Trötende Saxofone, humoreske Ragtime-Pianos und
wandernde Kontrabässe tun das Ihrige.
»Cleavage« kann auch Dekolleté bedeuten. Und es spricht für diesen MC,
dass er es mit der Banalität dieser Anzüglichkeit nicht belässt. Die
Figur auf dem Cover jedenfalls sieht aus wie ein Captain Future für
Zeiten, in denen selbst die Architektur ganz auf biomorphe Formen setzt.
Sie ist festgehalten just in dem Moment, als sie (Fake-?)Brüste als
Raketen abschießt. Der dazu passende Track trägt den wunderschönen Namen
»She-Hulk Dehorning The Illusionist«. Flöten-Intro, Bebop-Drums, und
dann erzählt Busdriver vom ersten Date mit ihr und wie er langsam zu
ihrem »Boytoy« degeneriert. »You Treat Dinner Dates Like Fucking Table
Tennis« taucht da auf, einer der ganz besonders originellen Vorwürfe
zwischen Pärchen. Busdriver hat eben auch einen Ruf zu verlieren: nicht
seinen, sondern den des »Goodlife Café«. An diesem mythenstiftenden Ort
des Westcoast-Rap haben die Jurassic 5 und Pharcyde von Freestyle
Fellowship gelernt. Auch Busdriver kam wohl dort mit Aceyalone in
Kontakt und teilte sich später die Bühne mit ihm. Zwei andere
Goodlife-Gänger haben ihm die Beats gemacht: Daddy Kev und D-Styles von
den Invizibl Skratch Piklz. Cool und kosmisch, nicht fett. -- Christoph Braun, Spex.de