Prefuse 73 – One Word Extinguisher (Warp)
September 9th, 2003 by soyo
I almost sent this cd back to BCHQ! I was sat watching Corrie (whilst burning the cd to minidisk so I could take it with me on a train journey to London) and kept hearing snippets of, what can only be described as hip-hop. Don’t get me wrong I like hip-hop; it’s just that I’m not an expert and felt that I couldn’t do the album a proper review. Well I kept it, and took said train journey to big smoke.
A couple of reasons made me not want to send it back: firstly, it was on the Warp label (gotta be worth a listen); secondly, the sleeve notes (I always read the sleeve notes) said it was recorded in a shithole on a shit street, which made me smile, and ; thirdly the credits. The credits thanked the usual, but also paid respect to all of the innocent people that have been victims to US aggression etc. As a bonus there was no mention of a thanks to ″the almighty creator for giving me this gift″ that appears on lots of wannabe gangsters albums. It always perplexes me – what are they doing? Hedging their bets in case they shot in da hood tomorrow? I thought these guys were invincible hard cases, not Ned Flanders in disguise, oh well back to the music. My sleeve note/label induced hunch was proved right – it’s a corker.
Apparently Prefuse 73 is Scott Herren (any relation to Jack?) a gangly resident of Atlanta, Georgia and, from my scant knowledge of hip-hop, seems to be something of a pioneer pushing over the safe, predictable RnB induced boundaries that many exponents (Outkast, the Roots, Spearhead and Dead Prez excluded – boy I do know some hip-hop after all!) are happy to live within.
The 20-odd tracks contain some very strange samples, glitches, fuzzy guitar and general weirdness. It sounds like it has been thrown together for hours inside a studio with the resultant good bits rising to the top and making it onto the album(there is also an album of out-takes!). The good bits are good, real good.
One Word Extinguisher is a remarkably coherent album despite its disparate parts. Maybe some could dismiss it as art school experimentalism, but the albums feels energetic and dirty enough to be convincingly from the streets (but what do I know?) It is refreshingly different from the guns, bling and hoes hip-hop that quite frankly bores me to tears. Hip-hop beats with electronica at the fore, with not much in the way of vocals makes for a pleasing change. It just goes to show that you don’t need to own a degree in B-boy’ology to enjoy obscure hi-hop, but then purists may not call it hip-hop, they may call it electronic weird stuff. I did hear that Prefuse 73′s fans include Destiny’s Child, En Vogue, now that’s weird!
4.5/5
Soyo
Prefuse 73′s One Word Extinguisher on Warp is out now
