E-Mail This Article to a Friend Quannum projections Lyrics Born tackles a remix album BY MICHAEL ALAN GOLDBERG
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Remix albums are, at best, a roll of the dice. You know it, I know it, and Bay Area rapper/producer Tom Shimura, a/k/a Lyrics Born, knows it. "They started off as a great idea, but then I think record companies started looking at ’em as a way to squeeze extra dollars outta people," he says when I reach him on the road in Fort Collins, Colorado, on the eve of a tour that brings him to the Middle East this Wednesday. "That’s the public perception: y’know, sometimes all you get are 10 remixes with maybe one little beat that’s different. That’s pretty sad."

That didn’t stop 32-year-old LB, who helped found the pioneering hip-hop collective Solesides (now Quannum Projects) along with DJ Shadow, Blackalicious, Lateef the Truth Speaker, and Jeff Chang. He decided to buck the trend with his new Quannum project, Same !@#$, Different Day. Yes, it’s a remix album (due on April 26), with new versions of 10 tracks culled mainly from his exceptional 2003 full-length debut, Later That Day . . . (Quannum). But it also has five new songs, along with an A-list of collaborators: DJ Shadow, Jumbo of Lifesavas, Dan "the Automator" Nakamura, Stereo MCs, Chief Xcel of Blackalicious, KRS-One, Cut Chemist, Morcheeba, and Quannum chanteuse Joyo Velarde.

And these aren’t just remixes — they’re radical reworkings featuring completely fresh music and/or lyrics and more high points than a Cheech & Chong film. After a 48-second, snore-filled sound-collage intro, the album kicks off with two wholesale revamps. Jumbo turns the languid electro shamble "Hello" into a full-scale, double-speed funk party with a super-inflated bass groove, a bouncing clavinet line, horn flare-ups, and an extra head-bobbin’ beat. For "Pack Up," he reshapes the hard-hitting snare snap and ditches the Hendrixy fuzz swing for dark, lean, DJ Krush–style backdrop while KRS-One and Evidence (Dilated Peoples) join in on new verses that play off the original’s "wack-rapper" theme.

Other mixes stay truer to the originals. SF trip-hoppers Halou oversee a murkier version of "The Last Trumpet" that finds DJ Shadow laying down scratches and Morricone-ish samples over subtle layers of Latin percussion until it’s transformed into what sounds like a lost U.N.K.L.E. joint. LB’s own remix of his hit single (and Diet Coke ad) "Callin Out" is left largely intact to support new verses from rappers E-40 and Casual.

Of the new tracks, "I’m Just Raw" is a braggadocio romp played out over a stark, bad-mutha groove generated by Automator. LB savors every putdown, slowing his baritone growl and over-enunciating each syllable in a sing-songy manner: "It’s like Gary Coleman versus Big Boss Man/The Loch Ness Monster up against a crawdad/Talkin’ Sly Stallone in Rocky versus Sly Stallone in Copland/Judge Judy versus Johnny Cochrane/Oh man, Nell Carter versus Karen Carpenter, topless . . . "

LB is also capable of lightning-lipped linguistics that put Q-Tip’s old "lyrically I’m Mario Andretti on the Momo" claim to shame: on a remix of "Do That There" (helmed by Young Einstein of the Ugly Duckling crew), he launches an astonishing 40-second sprint with the line "I met a hermit named Kermit McDermott with a learner’s permit/Curb surfin’ in a purple Suburban slurpin’ an orange sherbet," flipping around rhyme schemes and cadences until astonishing references — "Burberry turban," "burgundy Murray bike," "Truck Turner," "Mr. Furley," "A triangle perm reminded me of Lionel Richie" — fly out of the mix.

As he looks toward his next album, LB admits that working with so many producers and rappers made him rethink some of his long-held creative beliefs. "What I learned was not to obsess," he chuckles. "When I did Later That Day . . . I was hyper-critical of every move. I’d write something, record it, then proofread, revise, and go through every single option to make sure I made the right choices. But Automator just kinda gets into the groove and does it — there’s not a lot of second guessing and deliberation unless something’s really wrong. I can obsess over a snare to the point where it doesn’t even matter, I was kinda able to get over that."

In the meantime, he’s supporting the remix disc with a club trek that features, for the first time, a backing band. "I felt like I’d topped out with the DJ. I mean, I’ve been doin’ it that way for 10 years and I’ll continue to do it, but not exclusively. With the band, I get the opportunity to bring spontaneity to it. But y’know, there’s down sides too — the hard part is gettin’ them to play like the records because it can’t just be a free-for-all. And it takes a long time to develop a band. It’s like anything else I’ve done — I bring stuff to the table, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, you have to re-evaluate and come at it again. That’s how you learn."

Lyrics Born performs this Wednesday, March 30, downstairs at the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square, with Heiruspecs and MC Kabir opening; call (617) 864-EAST.