Canibus - Can-I-Bus (1998)

I was about to muse upon how Canibus appeared to have vanished in the wake of the first two, when a moment's online research reveals that actually he released about a million albums since this debut and seems to have done well for himself, even if it turns out I've been facing the wrong direction all of this time. Anyway, I recall that this one didn't do so well as everyone had hoped, given the lad's brief tenure as the next big thing; and he spent at least some of the follow up blaming Wyclef for fucking up the production on the first, echoing what had been said in a few of the reviews, which probably contributed to my giving it a miss. Plus Canibus seemed like a bit of a dick, at least in interview, banging on about flying saucers, freemasons and other conspiracies, qualifying this obsession by proposing that sceptics were uneducated fools who enjoyed being blind to the truth of the true facts, and so on and so forth.

Also, naming yourself after the ganja…

So once again, here I am two decades after the fact thinking, how bad could it have been?

Well, Channel Zero, in which our man explains about lost civilisations, aliens and stuff, is frankly fucking stupid, although one can't help but admire the lyrical dexterity by which he attaches this particular kick me sign to his own ass; but apart from that, Can-I-Bus is not at all what I expected. I was aware of his being a pretty decent lyricist - formidable even - and his name turns up in a few of those all-time top fifty listings. On the strength of this set, I'd say he could be top ten, not least if either Tupac or Eminem made it into any of the aforementioned listings - which I'm sure they did seeing as how they usually do. He's mostly a battle rapper, and it shows on this album, which would have been a bit monothematic except you're too busy tripping over the wordplay to notice; and extra points for the massively satisfying LL Cool J takedown. As the man says:

More lines than the bible quoted from Jesus.
More lines than a African herd of zebras.

Production-wise, sorry, but Wyclef did a great job. I don't see how it sounded too commercial - as was the accusation - in 1998, and in 2022 it may as well be an underground DJ Premier mixtape recorded direct from AM radio, just one copy owned by the artist's mum. It's a clean sound for sure, but hardly conventional or pop or mainstream beyond Wyclef presumably making sure it wouldn't scare anyone off playing it on the radio. It's not the greatest rap album ever, or the greatest debut ever, but it's fucking solid for something the artist ended up disowning; and if it failed to knock Illmatic or Ready to Die or whatever from the throne, we can at least justify Can-I-Bus named in the same sentence, which isn't too shabby.

World Domination Enterprises - Let's Play Domination (1988)

I hadn't thought about them in some time, then two days after I dig this out on a whim, they turn up on Bandcamp with Go Dominator, a new single, the first in a couple of decades - albeit a new single  which was recorded yonks ago but never released. It's as though the universe is trying to tell me something, something above and beyond that the time is right; because the time has always been right for World Domination. With each year that passes, these songs seem ever more relevant.

My first encounter was the phenomenal Asbestos Lead Asbestos, possibly one of the most wonderfully unpleasant songs ever committed to vinyl; although never really having had my finger on the pulse of anything, it was a couple of years old by the time I heard it and seemingly contemporary to the Acid Angels' Speed Speed Ecstacy which similarly named two substances in the title, and one of them twice, so Asbestos Lead Asbestos somehow felt like its dark toxic counterpart, at least to me.

I wasn't convinced by the album when first I heard it. I recognised the fucking horrible racket, but it seemed to lack the restraint which worked so well for Asbestos Lead Asbestos, taming the chaos just enough to suggest something in the vicinity of a funkier, noisier Public Image Limited around the time of Metal Box.

Anyway, I persisted. Initial impressions additionally suggested comparisons with the Pop Group, but where the Pop Group were overtly funky between the squalls of guitar noise, Let's Play Domination seems more like some primal rockabilly enterprise spinning horribly out of control. It's the bluesy inflections and the one foot somewhere in the Venn diagram with black music - dub, reggae, rap, disco and so on, hence covers of U-Roy, LL Cool J and Lipps Inc.'s Funkytown blasted out without any obvious trace of irony or sarcasm and so firmly distancing World Domination from fellow guitar noise merchants of the time.

You may notice I've already used both horrible and unpleasant as compliments, which is because it's hard to know what the fuck to do with that guitar sound. It's like a detuned power station throwing up, something with no equivalent in nature which has congealed in the grooves, a truly untamed beast which seems to contrast wildly with the tight but excitable rhythm and Keith Dobson's teen idol vocal, teen idol here meaning Ricky Nelson rather than Donny Osmond. The combination seems so perfect and simple that it's bewildering how no-one else thought to do it this way. There hasn't been much which has sounded quite like this album before or since, possibly because groups this violent and noisy rarely sound quite so happy about rubbing our faces in everything which is repulsive about human society right now, yet without simply adding to the shit mountain; and in Ghetto Queen, I'm not sure I've heard anything so beautiful which doesn't really communicate anything you would call a tune, just the jagged drone of electricity pylons fighting on the horizon in a world where the Cramps were actually the Swans, sort of.

New single available here.

Lil Nas X - 7 EP (2019)

As I write, Old Town Road is apparently the singular most enormous pop parade hit song of all time. Being old as fuck and isolated by choice from almost all aspects of contemporary culture, I only encountered the song whilst rummaging around on YouTube in hope of finding some evidence of rap music not having gone completely down the toilet; and thankfully, here is that evidence.

It's weird and disorientating to realise that I'm this old, and that my opinion of Lil Nas X doesn't make much difference one way or the other. I first heard of Billy Ray Cyrus when my friend Eddy did an impersonation of him in the pub in order to illustrate just how shit was Achy Breaky Heart, which would have been 1992; and Chris Rock's Bigger & Blacker was July 1999, at which point Lil Nas X would have been just three months old.

Three months old…

Anyway, no genre has been so historically ready to drown its own kids as rap, usually because someone dared to poke a toe out beyond the established boundary dividing fake from that which is kept wearyingly real; and it sounds a bit like rock music, or there are too many naughty words and it's not very empowering, or it lacks the lyricism of LL Cool J, or It Takes a Nation of Millions is the greatest rap album of all time, in my humble opinion…

If rap has a problem right now, it's probably due to trap poisoning, adult fans of My Little Pony, and grown men who think growling the word represent for three minutes constitutes a flow. Lil Nas X avoids the pitfalls by sticking to tracks which sound good rather than ticking boxes. If that's a problem, maybe just pretend you're listening to Outkast.

Old Town Road samples Nine Inch Nails and features Billy Ray Cyrus, autotune, and line dancing in the video - a recipe for disaster which has somehow resulted in sheer brilliance. I've now seen a few sneering reviews grumbling about it being a gimmick, just a meme, a novelty record, hardly comparable with Big Daddy Kane or someone else you weren't actually listening to first time round, but it's all bollocks. Old Town Road feels a lot like life in San Antonio, at least in certain respects, and does what it sets out to do to perfection, so I couldn't really give a shit if it's somehow a less important cultural artefact than Bohemian Rhapsody because says you.

Lil Nas's success is in making good use of all the shit which usually ruins a song, not least the autotune which features heavily here. Most often the effect turns an underwhelming vocal into a musical component, and one which sits poorly with whatever else is going on, reducing words to an extraneous embellishment. Our guy on the other hand gets the balance exactly right, using tracks which never get too crowded and yet pack enough of a punch in the equalisation department to sound pretty darn beefy; so the treated vocal has space and nothing gets clogged up in the pipes; and you don't have to call it rap if that bothers you, because it still works, and still does what rap should do.

Ridin' on a horse,
You can whip your Porsche,
I been in the valley,
You ain't been up off that porch.

There are also a couple of pseudo-trap numbers, but this is a bizarrely eclectic set without any two tracks quite sounding alike, and Bring U Down could almost have been on that last Pixies album, if that's any indication. Even Cardi B, of whom I didn't particularly think I was a fan, sounds blistering on Rodeo.

Whatever you want to call it, 7 is a fucking great set, pop music done right - simple without being stupid, moving without simpering, smart and snappy in all the right places, and it bangs like a motherfucker, as I believe is the parlance. My only criticism is that there doesn't seem to be a physical release, but never mind.