Music Of The Weak: This Ain’t a Mixtape, It’s a I Don’t Give a Fuck Tape

Themselves – TheFREEHoudini

The Anticon Collective used to want to redefine the rap landscape, and arguably they did, but now they’re just playing the same game as everyone else. After dropping The No. Music—as great an introduction to the Anticon sound as any—at the height of the collective’s prolificacy in 2002, Themselves (as a brand) has remained relatively silent, except for a freaky collaboration with The Notwist in 2005 as 13 + God. Instead, members Doseone and Jel have been rolling with Subtle, who have a similar sound to Anticon, but represent the Lex label instead. With a new album out this year, Themselves are returning to a completely different musical moment than the one they left. In order to announce their return, the band has, naturally, released a mixtape. It’s a little weird to see the guys who dropped Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop in 1999 with delightfully little regard for either the cliché or the genre tropes they were exploiting now turn around and announce on their website, that TheFREEHoudini is “a contribution to the mixtape medium circuit so tied to hip hop's history” and “a living document of hip hop’s past, present and future.” I guess everybody has to grow up sometime.

Yet, Themselves’ newfound and oddly fitting maturity results in a uniformly compelling album in TheFREEHoudini. Where The No. Music felt like a sketchy side-project (in fact, that was a lot of its charm), TheFREEHoudini is the real thing, boasting fascinating drum patterns, solid rhymes, and a ton of musical ideas. Also: guests. Buck 65 and Slug, who both appeared with Themselves and the rest of the Anticon on Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop, make appearances—as do Aesop Rock, Busdriver, and cLOUDDEAD. But just about everyone succumbs to the same mistaken hyperbole as the website—10 years ago, these kids were flipping KRS-1 the bird and screaming “I Am Hip Hop,” now they’re working their asses off to try to prove just how hip hop they are. (It’s telling that I initially misread the website’s assertion that Slug “sounds inspired” as “sounds like Old Ironsides.”) Of course, even the derailments usually yield at least a nugget of goodness—like when Doseone rattles off a spoken, beef-baiting interlude that includes the line, “You ain’t no gangster, you sleep too much.” And even if their approach to marketing is toothless, some of Themselves’ insults have some bite. They seem to not want to step on hip hop culture’s toes, but indie rock is okay—like when Doseone sings “Air Forces Ones and square horse tongues” over a TV on the Radio-parodying reverb march before cutting it off with a “Fuck this shit.”

At the end of the day, these guys still have blood in their veins—which may be exactly what TheFREEHoudini needed to prove, before they release their actual album, Crowns Down, in the fall. TheFREEHoudini’s relatively confining “contribution to hip hop’s history” conceit at least keeps them focused enough to maintain a more consistent album than anything Subtle has done. Hearing dudes with something to prove is usually going to be leagues more compelling than simply hearing dudes fuck around in the studio—which is the trap Anticon tends to fall into most often. Of course, Themselves are also offering a CD version of TheFREEHoudini for sale, with 16 minutes of extra music and some more guest spots, so they’d better be on point. Their interpretation of the Radiohead model of album sales in a post-label age may leave a little to be desired (Even if you’re going to give a solid 50-minute chunk of music with no individual tracks, a list of song titles and guest appearances would have been, you know, nice.) But it’s always nice to hear artists treating mixtapes as legitimate albums. At one point, Doseone screams, “This ain’t a mixtape, it’s a I Don’t Give a Fuck tape.” But he totally does give a fuck, for worse and for better—which means he’ll have to settle for a Trying a Little Too Hard But Still Relatively Awesome tape.

-Martin Brown, 2009

Comments

[Kenny Cather]

I've always felt bad for anticon. They're all extremely nice guys - or at least were in the late 90's - but their music has always been so, so bad. The only one with the talent to match his ambitions was Sean, and he went on to do his own thing in Atmosphere. The rest of anticon always struck me as a bunch of guys who badly wanted to be avant garde and change music, but didn't have the musical skill or the desire to work hard at crafting those skills.

[qube]

What are the music of Anticon?

[The Beast Must Die]

There's some fucking awesome music been put out by Anticon, alongside some self-indulgent pap. I love all of WHY's records, the first Themselves album (when they were just Them) and Sole's 'Bottle of Humans'- a landmark in angry ginger rap. The first 4 Cloudead EP's will always occupy a special part of my heart.
Trouble is they got all caught up (mostly through their own hyperbole) in a tedious art hip-hop/real hip-hop debate, which tends to sully most people's view of the. Point is, they're all died in the wool hip-hop fans, who tried to do something with the form that suited their own personas. The mistake they made was in assuming that hip hop needed saving.
new mixrape is pretty boss - heavy digital beats by Jel and some fiercely on-point rapping from all involved.

[The Beast Must Die]

Holy shit, I did not mean to call it a mixrape.

[david brothers]

It kind of sucks that Anticon's best moment was when rapper Sole dissed El-P, which prompted El to drop Linda Tripp.

Which features Sole apologizing as part of the track. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJrQwvEVtMw

Nice one!