Hip-hop 'n' the Hub

Mr. Lif and Akrobatik find release

by Michael Endelman

Mr. Lif's dreadlocks are thick and tangled. Jutting out from his scalp at odd angles, they wrap around one another like swampy kudzu vines, blocking out the sunlight and casting dark shadows across his face. Adding a sense of mystery to his mad-scientist persona, Lif's matted locks hang well past his shoulders and are usually the biggest and thickest in the room. But not tonight. He's opening up for reggae legend Burning Spear at the Roxy, and there are some Rastafarian brothers chilling in the back who have him beat by at least a foot.

Apart from the aforementioned Rastas, the Roxy audience is far from a typical rap crowd -- a mixture of dressed-up urbanites, grizzly hippies, and gray-haired world-music fans. But Lif likes it this way. In fact, he hasn't played a straight-up hip-hop show in Boston since the middle of the summer. Mostly that's because the bespectacled MC wants to build up hype for his Enters the Colossus EP (Def Jux) and the release party for it tonight (December 7) at the Middle East. But Lif has also been trying to reach a non-rap audience in the Hub by opening for acts like Zap Mama and M. Doughty of Soul Coughing.

And as the Burning Spear set demonstrates, that's not always easy. When Lif gets going -- with a lengthy spoken-word about the vestiges of slavery -- the Roxy crowd is definitely puzzled. And as his sidekick, DJ Fakts-One, cuts in a fierce beat, the crowd just freezes, seeming stunned by the spectacle of this wide-eyed seer spewing rhymes that threaten to "burn off your flesh like you were David Koresh." Slowly, however, the audience warms, as Lif and his crew (Fakts-One, MC Illin' P, and DJ Sense) charm it with goofy stage antics, a twitchy dancehall number, and a quick primer on the hip-hop basics -- freestyles, call-and-response crowd chants, DJ trickery. By the end of the brief set, Lif has hooked Burning Spear's fans: they're screaming out choruses, pumping their fists, and nodding their heads like old-school regulars.

Mellowing out back afterward in a dressing room that's little more than a janitor's closet, Lif is all smiles and positive attitude. Earlier, though, it was a different story. Characterizing himself as a "constricted" MC with "a big palm tree stuck up my ass," he was definitely stressed. Just 15 minutes before showtime, he was still studying a lyric sheet and finalizing the set list. "I need to relax," he admitted before jetting off to find a beer. "I'll catch up with you after the show, then it'll be more chill. Or maybe not, 'cause I'll be stressed about things that went wrong."

Nothing went wrong, but I get the feeling Lif will never really be able to let go of the angst. Can't blame him -- he's got a lot on his mind. Like the mechanization of agriculture and impending eco-destruction, and, well, the future. Not the distant future, though the fate of the human race does give him some worry. No, Lif's concerned about his near-future.

See, Mr. Lif is on the verge of something. The most popular Boston hip-hop artist since Ed O.G. hit the charts a decade ago, he's at a crucial point in his career. He's followed the expected underground hip-hop trajectory so far -- a handful of 12-inch singles, mix-tape appearances, cameos on other independent releases, and a European tour. Now, in order to become more than just a Boston phenom, he has to take it another step. Like he says, "Going to the lab and making a record and selling three to five thousand copies is cool for now, but it's gotta be about more than that. I wanna go national."

The traditional way young hip-hop artists take it nationwide is by hooking up with a mentor -- an older, respected artist who's willing to take a young buck out on tour and maybe even snag him a record deal. Busta Rhymes brought up Rah Digga and the Flipmode Squad; Erick Sermon brought up Redman; Gang Starr helped out Jeru the Damaja. But though Boston boasts a promising underground hip-hop scene, it lacks the sort of older established artist who could bring along the next generation. (Ed O.G. is still around, but he's busy working on relaunching his own career.)

Lucky for Lif, he's made some friends in high places. Recent collaborations with Del tha Funkee Homosapien and DJ Vadim have upped his profile. More important, he's become a close compatriot of El-P, the frontman for underground hip-hop stalwarts Company Flow.

Calling Lif a "genius," El-P (on the phone from Chicago) is effusive in his praise: "He's just got this great vibe as person and artist. His voice is sick, his flow is nasty, his train of thought is capable of building intelligent ideas, but he also has the skills to rip you a new asshole on the mike. I'm biased because he's one of my best friends, but I think he's gonna be on the forefront of a new wave of hip-hop."

Since meeting in '97, the two have collaborated on wax and on stage (Lif toured Japan and Australia with Co Flow). And Enters the Colossus is the first release on El-P's new Def Jux label, an association that connects Lif to a creative cadre of hard-hitting and brain-blurring acts that include Cannibal Ox and Aesop Rock. El-P expects that this collective crew will be touring together by the middle of next year.

Merging the worlds of Sun Ra and Stan Lee, Enters the Colossus is an Afro-futurist mind trip stocked with time-traveling and mind-unraveling rhymes that drop references to Greek mythology, the Bible, and pro golfers. Alternately brutal and brainy, Lif's flow is more stylized than ever; traditional rap cadences are twisted and torqued into a minefield of irregular pauses, syllable stretches, and offbeat accents. Weighty beat science by El-P, Lif himself, and a few local producers (Fakts-One, Insight, Pawl) intensifies the claustrophobic and gothic vision: "Cro-Magnon" burbles up from some deep primordial ooze; "Front on This" staggers and stutters with off-center string stabs; "Pulse Cannon" is driven by rubbery woofer-blowing laser-beam oscillations.

Like a hip-hop Clark Kent, Lif's a bookish guy who works out his anger and frustration in a superhuman alter ego. He spends most of the album shapeshifting into murderous beepers ("Front on This"), slaying wack rappers with "rhyme grenades" ("Enters the Colossus"), and cooking up elaborate fantasies that involve "devouring the ozone and disappear[ing] in a puff of exhaust" ("Cro-Magnon"). You get the feeling he'd rather star in a Marvel comic than a BET video. And like any superhero worth his or her salt, he wants to save the world, or at least change it to fit his progressive politics and radical environment vision.

Lif matches his well-meaning, "conscious" program with a ruthless and hardcore battle style. He's not afraid to get his hands bloody with ruthless rips that tear up the opposition. On "Datablend," his hankering for gory imagery eventually treads on Hannibal Lecter territory: "Talk of being phatter is senseless data and useless chatter that leads to another well-done rapper served on a platter/On Jeffrey Dahmer Day/My favorite holiday/Served lukewarm with sauce -- yeah hollandaise."

Best of all, he makes it sound tasty enough that there's a good chance he'll be around long enough to serve up seconds.

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The Boston MC known as Akrobatik has been a home-town favorite since 1998, when the burly rapper released the astonishing "Ruff Enuff/Woman" single (Detonator), an ear-twisting 12-inch that backed a rugged battle track with a brilliant anti-sexist narrative. These days Akro is turning heads on the national scene with "Internet MCs" (Rawkus), a spiky tongue-lashing single that promises to "snatch your Webmaster and break both his legs/Post it on your site, formatted as jpegs." A dis track for these dot-com times, "Internet MCs" verbalizes the backlash against the digital swagger and electronic egotism of backpackin' laptoppers -- those keyboard virtuosos who populate hip-hop chat rooms and on-line freestyles sessions.

A self-professed "Internet head," Akro wrote the track after "bumping into so many assholes on line" last December, and as his first act of the new year, he posted it (quite appropriately) on undergroundhiphop.com. "It's kind of an attack or a tease," he explains over lunch at the Deli Haus, "on those kids who get on the Net and make up these personae as ill lyricists and battle in chat rooms. They talk a lot of garbage about well-known MCs, but they've never done a show or rhymed in front of people." Although Akro has the Web savvy to participate in e-ciphers, he knows that the culture's roots lie elsewhere -- as he puts it, "Internet MCs, heed my advice/On-line key styles don't make you nice/Bring it to the streets and start rabble rousin'/Sincerely yours, Akro2000."

Although the timely e-shtick of "Internet MCs" is helping to make Akro a known quantity outside the Hub, his subsequent release, The EP (Detonator), portrays a well-rounded MC who promises to be around long after the dot-com boom has died down. Armed with a populist slant that is unusual in the underground scene, Akro makes no qualms about his mainstream dreams. "I want to make my stuff accessible," he argues, "I want to make it something that people can understand. I want to make it for someone who doesn't spend all their time with an underground hip-hop tape in their walkman."

The result is a level-headed and lucid flow reminiscent of old-school legend KRS-One: all sharp syllables and spiky angles. And the lyrics -- ranging from hands-in-the-air anthems ("Say Yes Say Word") to rugged battle tracks ("Ruff Enuff") to respectful love jams ("U Got It") -- cover all of the bases, making Akrobatik a beacon of back-to-basics, fist-pumping fun in the increasingly dour and divisive world of independent hip-hop.

Mr. Lif performs tonight, December 7, at the Middle East downstairs with Company Flow and Cannibal Ox. Akrobatic performs as part of the Boston Hip-Hop Fest next Friday, December 15, at the Middle East downstairs. Call 864-EAST.

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