All
You Need To Make Music - Stark Reality Left
It To Us (with EL-P,
Aesop Rock, Tame 1 & Yak Ballz of The Weathermen) - Cage
Cage has
the kind of life story most aspiring new-schoolers just lie and
make up. He was abused by his dishonorably discharged junky father and
his stepfather, kicked out of high school, overmedicated in a mental
hospital, became a white-rap wunderkind in the early 90s, almost put
out an album on Columbia, kicked around the major label system, got
hooked on drugs, had a kid, got dissed on the first Eminem album, and
found himself a home in underground rap. It's much more interesting
than the stab stab stab, kill kill kill, drugs drugs drugs shit he's
been rapping about for years. Hell's Winter, then, is both a revelation
and a forehead-slappingly obvious artistic move: The dude finally
started drawing on his own experiences.
Hell's Winter is a harrowing ride on which Cage describes his childhood
in fractured blips of vivid images instead of broad, sweeping
statements. On "Too Heavy for Cherubs", he matter-of-factly, almost
gleefully, describes being forced to help his father shoot up: "Erratic
then gone, I went from manic to calm/ Watching the yellow liquid drip
back out of his arm." On "Peeranoia", he recalls his own drug addiction
with a boastful, entertained lightness: "Didn't quit PCP, it quit me/
Reality rolled me up, took two puffs, then clipped me." But the album's
mission comes into sharpest focus on "Stripes", where Cage's anger
toward his father comes through without sarcasm or emotional distance.
Elsewhere, Cage applies this bleak disgust to subjects outside his
past; "Grand Ol' Party Crash" has an obnoxiously bananas George W. Bush
impression by Jello Biafra, but Cage also describes a soldier dying in
the hospital: "He gets word that his unit didn't make it/ Got a free
ticked home, but flatlined before he got to take it."
Of course, Cage also remains a demonic shock-rapper, and that side of
him is fully on display here. He still bashes his old label boss, still
fantasizes about murderous rampages, and unfortunately still says stuff
like, "There's a thin line between love and a fuck/ And how drunk she
gotta be to put it in her butt." But part of what makes Hell's Winter
work is that Cage still sounds hungry and savage and wild-eyed; it
wouldn't be anywhere near as charged or scalding if he'd turned into
Atmosphere overnight.
Even without the lyrics, Hell's Winter is the fullest realization of
the Def Jux aesthetic since Mr. Lif's I Phantom. Much of the production
comes from El-P, Central Services, and Blockhead, and all three rub
heavy falling-down-stairs drums and glitchworks against gorgeously
spacey blankets of synth. DJ Shadow's track for "Grand Ol' Party Crash"
is an amelodic fuzzed-out stomper, while Camu gives
the fiery
posse cut "Left It to Us" a metal-fried guitar lope.
Best of all,
Rjd2's track
for "Shoot Frank" is a tragically beautiful showstopper: dying house
pianos over moaning female vocals and rolling martial drums, with a
stunningly sad and resigned hook crooned by (of all people) Glassjaw's
Darryl Palumbo. Like the rest of Hell's Winter, it shows what happens
when the smartest people in indie rap decide to stop farting around and
make something that resonates.
Cage has
the kind of life story most aspiring new-schoolers just lie and
make up. He was abused by his dishonorably discharged junky father and
his stepfather, kicked out of high school, overmedicated in a mental
hospital, became a white-rap wunderkind in the early 90s, almost put
out an album on Columbia, kicked around the major label system, got
hooked on drugs, had a kid, got dissed on the first Eminem album, and
found himself a home in underground rap. It's much more interesting
than the stab stab stab, kill kill kill, drugs drugs drugs shit he's
been rapping about for years. Hell's Winter, then, is both a revelation
and a forehead-slappingly obvious artistic move: The dude finally
started drawing on his own experiences.