|
|
|
|
PopMatters home | short takes home | archives
PopMatters Music Short Takes
our brief reviews of new releases
 e-mail
print
comment
04 September 2003
Mr. Dibbs, The 30th Song (Rhymesayers)
If a great break record is something between a tool and a musical creation, then The 30th Song is somewhere between a great break record and an unremarkable instrumental album. Dibbs is flawless as a craftsman, dropping clever vocal samples, sound effects, and complex scratches with alacrity, cutting smoothly between beats, and even doing a few of them new-fangled mash-ups to funkify, for example, Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People". His beats have an experimental edginess that aligns him with El-P and the Anticon posse, and for that alone the album is worth a spin. But despite that prophetic title, he fails to come up with anything that resembles even at first a song -- this is a DJ set with bells and whistles, but no hooks or real structure, so there's little motivation to stick with it, or to listen to it more than once, unless your interest is more in the technique than the music. I recently heard DJing described as hip-hop's loyal child, always doing what it's told, and despite his heavy-metal vibe and notorious road antics, Dibbs here pretty much comes across as a musical momma's boy.
— David Morris
.: posted by Editor 9:16 AM
|
|
|
|
|
