Tony Stamp explores new albums by veteran rapper Black Thought, Auckland newcomers Baecorp and wonky Scottish producer Hudson Mohawke.
Cheat Codes by Black Thought & Danger Mouse
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When Tarik Luqmaan Trotter co-founded a rap group that would eventually be called The Roots in the late eighties, he named himself Black Thought. Those two words carry a heck of a lot of baggage, but looking back at his career, a moniker that profound is appropriate.
He’s widely regarded as one of the best MCs of all time, dazzling technical chops paired with some of rap's most thoughtful bars.
The last eight years saw The Roots take up residency on The Jimmy Fallon Show, around the same time they released their last album. Black Thought went solo for the first time in 2020, and two years later has delivered a follow-up.
It’s called Cheat Codes, and this time it’s in partnership with producer Danger Mouse, who harks back to his earlier, rugged beat-making as a platform for Black Thought’s hyper-literate wordplay.
Danger Mouse gained attention in 2004 when he released The Grey Album, which paired samples from The Beatles' White Album with acapellas from Jay-Z’s Black Album. It was a neat concept with compelling results. Two years later he paired with Cee Lo Green to form Gnarls Barkley, whose track ‘Crazy’ was dubbed ‘Song of the Decade’ by Rolling Stone.
Since then he’s produced albums for U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sparklehorse, Beck and more, proving his musical range extends far beyond beat-making.
On Cheat Codes ‘The Darkest Part’ he pairs a sample of 1973’s ‘Rest My Head’ by Kiki Dee with the kind of bombastic drums he was using 20 years ago in his work with Jemini the Gifted One.
The refrain sung by Kid Sister asks to “shine a light into the darkest part of me”, and Black Thought bounces off that sentiment to spin bars that draw a line from slavery to drugs and gun crime, mentions the pianist Thelonius Monk and boxer Roy Jones, and kinesiology (the study of movement).
Like everything he does, it’s dazzling not just through all the different ways he finds to rhyme things, but the rich sociological tapestry he presents.
‘No Gold Teeth’ does away with hooks altogether for a 2 min monologue on life as a race he’ll never stop trying to win. He refers to himself as “god of the microphone”, the kind of boast that’s common in hip hop - but Black Thought has the receipts to back it up.
At age 50 he’s approaching elder statesman status. Cheat Codes doesn’t feature a huge number of guest features, but they’re well chosen, from veterans like Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan to newer players like A$AP Rocky.
The track ‘Belize’ features a verse from MF Doom, who died in 2020. He collaborated with Danger Mouse in 2005 on the project DangerDoom. Here he’s typically hilarious, pausing mid-flow, clearing his throat, and rhyming the song’s title with "cheese" and "squeezed knees".
There was an element of novelty to The Roots in their early days - a full rap band, as accomplished in a live setting as they were at studio production. Their drummer Questlove has gone on to be their most recognisable member, in his role as bandleader, documentary-maker and encyclopedic music fan.
Social justice was always at the forefront of their music - the cover of the Grammy-nominated Things Fall Apart is an upsetting image of a Civil Rights era riot - so it came as a surprise when they relocated to late-night TV to support Jimmy Fallon.
They’ve used the opportunity to innovate within the format and play alongside a conveyor belt of top-class musical talent. But it is good to hear Black Thought get back to the essentials, alongside Danger Mouse’s old-school beat-making, and do what he does better than maybe anyone else - rap.
Joy on Tick by Baecorp
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A while back a few tracks by a new Auckland duo charted on student radio and were attention-grabbing purely through their names. Baecorp is a reference to the debt collection agency, and the songs were called ‘Can I Tick a Feeling’ and ‘Pak n Gap’.
All this wordplay lets you know exactly who this band is, and where they’re coming from. And listening to their music confirms they have songs to back it up; cynical and sweet in equal measure.
The song that starts the album is as good as shoegaze on a budget gets. Sam Denne’s blasts of layered guitar are thrilling, and Nirvana Haldar’s vocals are detached enough to form a perfect counterpoint.
It's called ‘Life Lover’, and you only need to glance at the other titles to get how drenched in irony those two words are. This is an album that credits its producer as ‘Depression’, with a capital D.
But there’s obvious zest in the music. The guitars in ‘Pak N Gap’ are just as triumphant, alongside lyrics about eating but never feeling full, and trying to feel something.
Throughout the album, Baecorp walks a fine line between cheeky and melancholic. Even the name of the album links depression and finance and does it with a wink.
They’re not saying these things are funny, but what else is left to do but laugh?
A song called ‘Every Dream of Mine Will Die’ is a gorgeous instrumental that contains a mission statement via a sample of the actress Olivia Colman from the show Landscapers. She says “I’m broken, so you can’t hurt me. No one can hurt me anymore”.
The liner notes for Joy on Tick were clearly written by Sam, referring as they do to Nirvana as “an absolute gem of a human” and Sam as “an occasional musical hack”.
I get that self-deprecation is part of the fun, but once I’d adjusted to all the wry jokes, each of these songs impressed with their musicality, and diversity.
As an example, ‘Sheetless Bed’ nudges Nirvana’s voice along with unnerving synth swells, and a quietly insistent layer of percussion.
I’m not sure how concerned Baecorp were with presenting a neat thematic package on Joy on Tick - my assumption is they were mostly concerned with making good music - but the concise framework of this eight-track offering really is impressive.
It even functions as a bit of conceptual art, as the liner notes say they’re “committed to receiving a cease and desist notice from Baycorp - a registered debt collection company staffed entirely by vultures”.
If they are forced to change the name that’s just part of the performance.
As an appropriate goodbye, the album ends on the title track. It's a delicate, melodically rich song that hinges on the phrase “payment in full”.
Cry Sugar by Hudson Mohawke
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In the late 2000s a type of music called ‘wonky’ came to prominence; a fusion of hip hop and dubstep with a myriad of other genres. Songs often felt so stuffed they were liable to tip over; the name really does sum it up perfectly.
A leading exponent of the form was a Scottish DJ called Ross Birchard, who at age 15 had been the youngest UK finalist in the DMC DJ competition, and years later adopted the name Hudson Mohawke after seeing those words scrawled on a statue.
His career since 2006 has featured a string of collaborations and mixtapes, but his new album Cry Sugar is only his third, and his sonic maximalism has found a fitting match in its parody of American excess.
Hudson Mohawke, or HudMo for short, has a knack for pairing his enormous rhythms with sugary pop hooks, and the opening track welcomes you into the album with some courtesy of singers Johan Lenox and Olivier St. Louis, and barely any drums at all.
That it’s called ‘Ingle Nook’, an old Scottish term for a chimney corner, just gives a taste of HudMo’s flair for the esoteric.
The drums arrive on the next track ‘Intentions’, and they’re particularly obnoxious, with a huge distorted kick straight out of the notorious dance genre gabba.
Back when he was a student Birchard would appear as DJ Mayhem on his university’s radio station, playing happy hardcore, and you can hear echoes of that hyperactive genre here.
Wonky tends to operate at a hip hop tempo, so even though the kick drum goes berserk, and the synths sound like a trance anthem, the halftime snare is there for you to nod your head to.
Things calm down somewhat on ‘Behold’ with a melodic 808 bassline over snatches of Tasha Cobbs vocals, stitched together into a stadium-sized anthem.
This album stretches over nineteen tracks, and Birchard has requested fans listen to it start to finish. I have to admit, that sounds exhausting, but I do enjoy it moment to moment, and there are peaceful sections, like the synth-led ballad ‘Lonely Days’. But even that's reasonably frenetic.
Hudson Mohawke has said he was influenced by the “apocalyptic film scores” of Vangelis, which you can hear on tracks like that, and “American decadence”, which he’s experienced quite a bit of now that he’s relocated from Glasgow to Los Angeles.
The video imagery for the album is borderline nightmarish - computer-generated warped faces and bodies that moves so fast it’s hard to process. A good match for the music then. The cover art features the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters in a thong.
It’s irreverent and mischievous, but Cry Sugar is balanced by Birchard’s love of pop melodies. A high point comes midway through, when he deploys ‘Is It Supposed’, a dancefloor bop that’s relatively uncluttered, and bracingly pretty.
