The following year would bring this, the debut Cannibal Ox album produced entirely by Co-Flow rapper/producer El-P. It remains El-P's best work (including Run the Jewels) all these years later.
Strange to think that at the time this seemed futuristic in both it's advanced slang editorials and progression of hip hop breaks into industrious, skull cracking, dystopian funk. Now however, it's clear that this was a last gasp of NY hip-hop in it's original minimalist beat and gristle form.
A linear progression from Jam Master Jay to Juice Crew to Public Enemy to BDP and RZA's dusty sampling. El-P's concussive boom-bap, if 'The samples is the flesh, and the beats the skeleton', well the flesh is all sirens, wheezing respirators and Darth Vader gurgles.
New York and it's hip-hop culture would soon be irrevocably changed and shaken by 9/11, just around the corner, and it would never fully recover. The axis was already shifting South.
Perhaps Cannibal Ox reached one possible logical endpoint of hip-hop, with their dense slang riddles and head scratching metaphors, zooming into view and away faster than a cubist train graffiti burner, colourful and complex, the tags only revealing themselves after detailed investigation. The rewards are great for those who want to go.
Cannibal Ox describe Harlem in detached terms of the observer, themes of separation from the physical ('soul from the shell'), horror and science-fiction are common. So called indie or backpacker hip-hop from this era often suffers from being knowingly clever and irritating, or having tricksy rhyme flows which are essentially awkward and unfunky. Can Ox are never less than finger snapping funky and repping Harlem world hip hop with addictive and distinctive flows, Vast Aire is the Q-Tip to Vordul Mega's Phife Dawg. When moments of clarity come among the lyrical stanzas it hits even harder.
Iron Galaxy opens the album, mapping the dimensions of the ghetto. 'You were a still born baby, mother didn't want you, but you were still born/ Boy meets world, of course his pops is gone/ What you figure?/ That chalky outlined on the ground is a father figure?/ So he steps to the next stencil, that's a hustler/ Infested with money and diamond cluster'.
Ox out the Box, has a freestyle feel, with Vast boasting his mic prowess 'I grab the mic like "Are you Experienced", But I don't play the guitar, I play my cadence'. Two posse cuts, 'Atoms' and 'Battle of Asgard' showcases the extended Atoms family of MC's and sounds like a hip-hop episode of Game of Thrones.
A B-Boy Alpha is about growing up around the birth of hip-hop culture.
Raspberry Fields is one of the best cuts, a weird tune which may be semi improvised with a great chorus. The cocky Vast, 'Oh my god, I said a word twice'.
Vein is in my top 10 hip hop tunes of the 00's. It's wears it's anxiety like vintage Geto Boys, the vocal tense, sometimes stuttering and overlapping to emphasize a loosening grip on reality. Desperate to escape the ghetto but bound by inequalities real and imagined. Vordul dreams of 'Ghetto acapellas in cathedrals' but is 'lost in this ghetto population, just another face that's facing all types of, like stereotypes and hatred', Vast then takes over telling a chilling narrative of meeting a local teen, bragging, waving a gun. Vast lectures him and says 'Peace, keep breathing' before vividly detailing the crew who hustles guns to kids, naming names, and observes, 'We're all from the same ghettos, and these are the same hollow tips that knocked Milly out of stilletos'. Vordul then delivers a panicked rap
where he's 'Off of this earth to return to my nature'.
The F-Word is a new spin on Biz Markie's' Just A Friend'. More heartbroken than it first appears, just like Biz! Even if it's couched in anger.
Stress Rap is wrapped in shrouds of honks, bells and train brakes and Painkillers is a nauseous lopsided organ and barroom piano funk about addiction.
Pigeons are used as a metaphor throughout Cannibal Ox's work for human kind and especially the Harlem ghetto (now battling gentrification!). 'Most of 'em, would rather expand their wings and hover over greater things/ that's what we call inspired flight/ But the pigeons gotta eat pizza crust every night'.
Cannibal Ox are from a NY of graffiti on trains, breakbeats and cultural isolation. They can symbolize the vast distances of imagination needed to reverse the negative forces of the ghetto, but to reach this precious plain, they walk the razors edge of reality. Others; Coltrane or Sly for instance have stepped over that edge, but this rarely in hip-hop, as artists are too grounded to 'the real'. Well 'realness' is overrated, and hip-hop needed to take that step, to realize it's psychedelic potential.
