Viper - Big Tits 4 U Errday (2015)

I can see how some might have reservations about this one, but I personally take the view that Viper is simply a man who understands his audience. Big Tits 4 U Errday seems to be part of a mammary themed cycle of releases, others in the series including Suck Her Tits and Luv Dem Big Milky Tits. Without wishing to seem like some beardy hipster whose tastes are limited to whatever you've never heard of, you can probably be forgiven for being unfamiliar with these works on the grounds that no-one seems to actually know how many albums Viper has issued beyond that it's been literally thousands in the last decade, albeit as downloads. Apparently his back catalogue is therefore mostly remixes or chopped and screwed variations on a theme, but for what it's worth, this is the third I've bought at random, and there are only three tracks I recognise, or at least which appear to sample material I've already heard; and against all odds, Big Tits 4 U Errday is every bit good as You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack and Kill Urself My Man.

Viper's sound is pretty startling when you first hear it. Wikipedia defines it as cloud rap, so I looked up cloud rap but the first sentence of the article referred to cLOUDEAD so I didn't bother reading the rest.

Let's try again.

Viper's sound owes a lot to the quarter speed cough medicine beats of DJ Screw and the like, but otherwise follows its own rules. It's hypnotic like vapourwave and sounds as though it was recorded on some cheap hunk of shit which probably cost about fifteen dollars. At first it sounds like an accident, hence the dubious classification of Viper as an outsider artist, but the more you listen, the harder it is to deny his power. Viper's baritone mumble, sounding as though it was recorded over messenger on a dial-up internet connection, slows to a crawl with percussion reduced to a distant ticking and a bass so distorted that it crumbles into digital slurry and genuinely leaves the cut resembling a dreamier version of something from one of those early Nocturnal Emissions albums, or even My Bloody Valentine transposed to Texas. It shouldn't work, but having now heard three albums of this stuff, I'm forced to conclude that it's no accident and that this guy is a visionary by some definition, at least musically.

Lyrically he's maybe a little basic compared to, off the top of my head, Nas, but nevertheless cuts what is very much his own furrow. For a collection named after boobs and sporting a picture of the same on the cover - or on the associated illustration seeing as this is download only - Viper is unusually respectful regarding women, and we find neither hoes nor bitches on this album so far as I noticed.

Girls love me 'cause I'm so real,
'Cause I'm laid back, 'cause I'm so chill.
Sharing they emotions and how they really feel,
That's why, with me, they make life-long deals.

I appreciate it probably isn't the full Andrea Dworkin, but it's nevertheless a long way from Bitches Ain't Shit. The same easy-going and strangely amiable vibe informs the entire album, meaning that regardless of whether he's trying to sell us crack or otherwise telling us how amazing he is, it's really difficult to dislike Viper. He somehow manages to peddle this schtick while seeming like a nice guy, or at least like it's not anything personal. You'll doubtless be disappointed if you're expecting A Tribe Called Quest, and I suppose it's kind of annoying how the titles bear no resemblance to the tracks they describe (and there aren't any songs about tits either), but this cranky underground weirdo keeps putting out albums which are better than anything by most of the big names. Don't be mislead by the je ne sais Sunday Sport ambience of the title, Big Tits 4 U Errday is a powerfully beautiful piece of work.

The Tubes - Remote Control (1979)

Amongst my memories of first discovering music, or at least music which wasn't the Beatles, the arrival of my first tape recorder is significant for reasons which are probably obvious. I don't remember hearing much music on the radio as a kid, but I heard enough to be aware of Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street. I used to go to stay at my grandparents' house in Kenilworth every other weekend, and there was a point at which whatever the usual arrangement had been, suddenly it was just my dad coming to fetch me home on Sunday evening, and because it was my dad, he had the radio on, usually tuned to the top forty countdown. This meant that I heard a selection of the same songs with such frequency as to imprint them on my memory as things I liked, and when I was given a tape recorder for my birthday, naturally the first thing I did was start taping things I liked from the radio; and Prime Time by the Tubes was in there right from the beginning, even though I'm not sure the dates add up right.

Later I learned that the Tubes were an American punk band, and later still I concluded that they were an example of how America never understood punk. I no longer quite hold either of these views, although I still maintain that a bunch of poets hanging around with Lou Reed in some New York loft was never, ever the birth of punk.

Anyway, I loved Prime Time so much that I immediately ran out and bought the album some forty years later when I happened across a copy in a crappy second hand store which seemed suspiciously like some guy's front room. I played it once and decided that I'd been right about Americans failing to understand punk.

Then, another year or so on, I dig the thing out for a second play and find that it has something, even if hanging onto the idea of the Tubes as an American equivalent to the Pistols is obviously a waste of time. I guess they were punk in so much as that they were a bit freaky, relatively speaking, and none too bothered about fitting in; plus there was a fairly low calorie anti-establishment message centered around the idea that too much telly is bad for you. I don't know about the earlier material, but musically this one is operatic and conspicuously well played, a little like a weird conflation of Kiss and Devo but coming out sounding a bit like Styx in their Mr. Roboto period. It's so theatrical it's almost Rocky Horror. Guitar solos, mullets, vocal harmonies, futuristic monosynth and sax solos: ordinarily I might duck for cover before Michael J. Fox shows up and tries to teach me a thing or two about what it's like to be young, but fucking fuck it - this is a great album. The songs, big pompous poodle-haired wedding cake compositions though they may well be, have got serious pull, never mind just Prime Time. There's TV is King, I Want It All Now, Only the Strong Survive, and about the only song I was less struck on is the ballad, Love's a Mystery (I Don't Understand) but my wife has been going crackers over that one, so everybody's happy.

Yella - One Mo Nigga ta Go (1996)

Of all the former members of NWA, Yella seems to have been the most overlooked in terms of the ensuing legend, at least unless you want to start talking about Arabian Prince and others whom even those who were actually in NWA have trouble remembering. This is probably because Yella was never quite so visible as the rest, and we never worked out what he actually did. I mean we know he was the DJ, or he was the other DJ, but er…

Of course, whereas the other four have had post-NWA musical careers which kept their works within the general vicinity of the wider public attention span, Yella shuffled off to produce independent art films catering principally for a male audience, so you could argue that he sort of switched lanes.

Well, sort of, except for producing, or at least having something to do with tracks on a few of the later solo releases by Eazy-E, releases which were actually pretty fucking great, contrary to the history established by people who write for the Source and others; and prodding the internet reveals that Yella produced a whole shitload of records which did well, back when he was still pushing the buttons; and actually there was this solo album, which didn't quite set the world on fire but is nevertheless solid as fuck.

That said, One Mo Nigga has such a laid back, mellow vibe that you can pretty much listen to the entire album without noticing it, then wonder what happened to track two as the disc spins to a stop in the player, at least at first. It's mostly a g-funk variant of light jazz funk-soul-R&B-all of that good shit, taking it slow and smooth and so polished that it wouldn't sound out of place on a Sting album; but the more you listen, the more you begin to feel it, and there's a lot of feeling on this one - it being a memorial to Eazy-E who had recently passed and who was the one still talking to Yella, I guess. It works because, among other factors, Yella knows his strengths and, aside from a few particularly poignant spoken pieces, leaves the vocals to others - BG, Knocc Out, Kokane and various Ruthless vets. There's nothing which punches you in the face like you might get with an Ice Cube set, because even with the few darker, street level numbers, the vibe is set firmly at four in the morning. It's music which knows what it's like to lose a buddy, and which knows there's not always anything to be said, so you just have to deal with it. One Mo Nigga ta Go probably proves the truism about the quiet ones at the back. It's not that it's unlike anything you've heard before, but nothing you've heard before will have sounded quite like this album.