The Opus: Breathing Lessons

When critics talk about Chicago hip-hop, they invariably begin with the same retort: “Hip-hop . . . in Chicago?”

As the third largest metropolis in the country, Chicago’s lack of output is an anomaly to fans and producers of — as the radio jingles put it — “urban music.” The city has talent, though it rarely sticks around. Unlike our neighbors in Minneapolis, who’ve coalesced around Slug and his Rhymesayers record label, those who’ve brought clout to the City of Big Shoulders have either left or fizzled out. Common and Da Brat were hailed with mainstream success and left; now locals are looking to Diverse and Kayne West to bring Chicago out of its holding pattern.

Despite the city’s inability to keep itself on the hip-hop map, a formidable underground scene sprang up in the midst of commercial impotence. Many artists are panned, and many suffer from the inevitable problems of being broke, being on a crappy label, or being “underground” — that is, they go unnoticed.

Fortunately, the Opus (Mr. Echoes and Isle of Weight) made somewhat successful inroads with its debut, First Contact, which featured, among others, such heavyweights as Aesop Rock and Slug. The duo’s latest effort, Breathing Lessons, features an MC (Lord 360) on only one track, and has, like several other recent acts, effectively gutted the barrier between electronica and hip-hop. The opening track, “Fanum’s Organs”, is the most orthodox on the record. Using a vocal sample, DJ cuts, and an infectiously head-nodding beat, the track seems to say, “Yes, this is a hip-hop album you’re about to listen to”. It’s not until Lord 360 comes out of nowhere — some seven songs later — that the thought returns.

Somewhere in the middle of “Mission Control”, a track laden with heavy keyboards and a creepy monologue, my girlfriend asks what kind of music we’re listening to. Hah. How ironic, I say to myself: an album called Breathing Lessons and a song called “Mission Control”. She goes on to ask what’s the point of even calling it hip-hop. With its arty sleeve, its reliance on textures instead of words, and its concept driven title, this is the kind of record that begs such a question.

The concept of “breathing lessons” is a metaphor for re-imagining hip-hop (or it could just be about flying around in space, though I tend to doubt it), i.e., culture is not static and the genre is changing, as is our perception of its components and cultural implications. Hip-hop has been in the midst of an identity crisis for quite a while — both sonically and racially. I think Eminem summed it up best when he said, “When I do shows, I look out into the crowd and see black, white, Chinese, Korean people — I see all these nationalities there for one thing. You don’t see that shit at a country show. You don’t see that shit at a rock show. It’s hip-hop that’s doin’ it.”

Hip-hop today is as much a product of the ethnicities recanted by Eminem as it is of American blacks. Likewise, the genre’s sound tends to go beyond a simple layering of DJ cuts, a drum machine, and a vocal flow — though that’s not to say that minimalist production isn’t out there, because it is. It’s simply more of a stylistic choice (at least for people who have record deals and/or studio time) than it is a technological necessity. What the Opus shows in its record — like Solesides, Def Jux, Anti-Pop Consortium (before they disbanded), Anticon, and all the other recent “avant-garde” groups — is a changing cultural backdrop. Breathing Lessons still knows where it’s coming from — the inclusion of a few hip-hop orthodoxies attests to that. But hearing a song like “Mission Control” or “Life’s Endless Cycle”, which, during “Part Three”, breaks into a tribal-sounding chant that’s looped throughout the track, is a disconcerting break in the record’s flow.

My only qualm with Breathing is that it’s not disconcerting enough. The melodies sometimes drone and the flat rhythms sound monotonous after a while. Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful album, a great idea, and these guys are well on their way to earning Chicago the respect it deserves. It’s the kind of record that can be dissected if given the time, though it doesn’t demand attention. And the way it finishes off, of course, in proper juxtaposition to the opening track, is with a three-minute flourishing of melody and ambient noise.

Whether the record is an outcropping of metaphorical wisdom or a concept record about space hardly matters, because they basically mean the same thing. Breathing Lessons is a record about imagination and mystery; it has a sense of where hip-hop is going and what it’s capable of.