Lee Fields and the Expressions | My World

CD Reviews

DJ Quik and Kurupt | BlaQKout

Mad Science (2009)

By RICHARD BECK | June 15, 2009

4.0 Stars

LA hip-hop has two threads, and DJ Quik pulls both of them. The first is g-funk, a production style that relies on deep, open grooves and an endless parade of funk samples. The second is West Coast backpacker rap, which is what happens when guys with enormous vocabularies smoke a lot of weed.

The fact that Quik has inhabited both worlds for two decades is a pretty nifty trick: he can go "out there" without disappearing completely, and he can talk about problems in the ghetto without sounding as if he lived at the Gap. On BlaQKout, his collaboration with the Philadelphia/LA MC Kurupt, his sonics range far and wide.

"Do You Know" has a glamorous sweep that suggests something like wise retrospection, and it leads right into "Watcha Wan Do," which could be the funky soundtrack to a Zelda game. Eventually, there's "9X Outta 10," which sounds as if somebody had handed turntables to the Terminator. This one has Kurupt rapping as if he were hypnotized — "It's gonna start again where it started at/Ended up, and restart again." It all might seem like preamble when you finally get to "Jupiter's Critic and the Mind of Mars," which may be the weirdest slice of rap genius since "A Milli."

Quik has some of Prince's little-guy arrogance, and here it's nearly schizoid: "It's character, you miss it?/It's America, you visit?/Did you get on a boat without a ticket?" Uh, yes? What? This makes him sound crazier than he actually is, though. Quik knows what he's doing. You can hear it on every track of this symphonic mini-masterpiece.

Related: The dirt, The Narcicyst | Self-titled, Busdriver | Jhelli Beam, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More

Comments

Add a Comment

Best Music Poll 2009 winners

Today's Event Picks

[FILM] Ghostbusters (new 35mm print) at Brattle Theatre

Plus 6 more >>

ARTICLES BY RICHARD BECK

SONG OF HERSELF | August 05, 2009
"Listen, I will go on record saying I love Feist, I love Neko Case. I love that music. But that shit's easy listening for the twentysomethings. It fucking is. It's not hard to listen to any of that stuff."

DJ QUIK AND KURUPT | BLAQKOUT | June 15, 2009
LA hip-hop has two threads, and DJ Quik pulls both of them. The first is g-funk, a production style that relies on deep, open grooves and an endless parade of funk samples.

FLIPPER | LOVE | May 26, 2009
Flipper formed in San Francisco in 1979, and they're remembered three decades later because of a song called "Sex Bomb" that's one of the funniest pieces of music I've ever heard.

ST. VINCENT'S ACTOR GETS A RUN-THROUGH | May 26, 2009
There were not one but two clarinets on stage at the Somerville Theatre on Tuesday night, and that gives you some idea of how intricate Annie Clark's chamber-pop compositions can be.

LOCAL COLOR | May 28, 2009
It's become a commonplace to say that "indie" is too vague to mean anything useful, but that's not actually true.

See all articles by: RICHARD BECK

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

WHOLE FOODS HEALTH-CARE BOYCOTT GATHERS MOMENTUM
Unfortunately for Whole Foods Market CEO and founder John Mackey, those who appreciate his store for the healthy, eco-friendly (read: left-leaning, progressive) lifestyle it promotes are the same citizens who support universal health care.

PLAYERS ONLY
Jessica Smith has spent years booking death-metal shows around Boston. On top of loads of meat-and-potatoes nights at O'Brien's in Allston and Dee Dee's in Quincy, two of her shows — Origin and Malevolent Creation — actually sold out the Middle East upstairs.

WHY WIND POWER BLOWS
The world is looking for a no-brainer solution to the 21st century's impending energy crisis, and wind power seems to provide many of the right answers.

REVIEW: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
From the beginning, Tarantino's obsessive self-referentiality and movie allusions never let you forget that you're watching a film.

DEFAMING TWITTER
Hate Twitter? Then you're probably loving a new, buzz-generating study — released last week by the Texas market-research firm Pear Analytics — which found that the vast majority of Twitter messages, a/k/a tweets, are pretty much worthless.

WHOLE FOODS HEALTH-CARE BOYCOTT GATHERS MOMENTUM
Unfortunately for Whole Foods Market CEO and founder John Mackey, those who appreciate his store for the healthy, eco-friendly (read: left-leaning, progressive) lifestyle it promotes are the same citizens who support universal health care.

WHY WIND POWER BLOWS
The world is looking for a no-brainer solution to the 21st century's impending energy crisis, and wind power seems to provide many of the right answers.

A MIGHTY WIND
This past Earth Day, President Barack Obama, speaking at an Iowa wind-turbine factory, delivered a gusty peroration. "The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy," he said. "America can be that nation. America must be that nation."

PLAYERS ONLY
Jessica Smith has spent years booking death-metal shows around Boston. On top of loads of meat-and-potatoes nights at O'Brien's in Allston and Dee Dee's in Quincy, two of her shows — Origin and Malevolent Creation — actually sold out the Middle East upstairs.