Just for that, it should be bombed back to the stone age.

What we’d heard of Freddie, we liked. His turn on Cunninlynguists’ ‘Hard As They Come’ was dope, and although he was clearly influenced by ‘Pac – always a risky path to travel – we were tentatively excited for Cold Day In Hell. And it certainly inspired some strong emotions in us. Emotions like hate. And confusion. And, eventually, pity. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to one of the worst rap projects we’ve heard yet.

This is gangsta rap. We don’t mean that as a criticism. Gangsta rap is great. We love it. But for it to sound even remotely relevant, gangsta rap has had to go beyond simply telling tales of the streets. That worked for a while back when NWA, ‘Pac and Biggie were recording. But if you’re going to tell the same stories they were telling, nearly twenty years later, you have to do it with a little bit of flare. It’s something DMX realised a few years ago. And lately, The Clipse, Rick Ross and even Joell Ortiz (to a certain extent) all took it to heart. They advanced gangsta rap. Freddie, it seems, didn’t get that particular memo.

It’s just…awful. Borderline unlistenable. Freddie’s rhymes are average at best, and while his rapid-fire flow is a neat trick, it’s a horrible fit for his languorous voice. We get that he’s stuck with this voice, but he just sounds too much like someone trying to impersonate ‘Pac. In a charades tournament. At a Butlins camp.

And then, there are the beats: half-baked, synth-heavy experiments that Manny Fresh would have turned his nose up at. The opening tracks Barely M.A.D.E It and Rob Me A Nigga are painful enough, but then he comes on with 187 Proof, and it’s a Justice League beat. At that point, we just gave up the will to live. Freddie, the only person who has ever made a Justice League beat sound good is Rick Ross. And it goes on. Track after track of utter drivel. The least enjoyable hip-hop we’ve ever heard.

And while this is probably criticism enough, we have one more bone to pick (may as well do this properly). The mixing. It’s awful. It’s distorted, unbalanced and generally off-putting. For the record, we didn’t rock this on crappy iPod headphones. We listened to it on a set of studio-quality Beyerdynamic cans – awfully sorry if that sounds pretentious, but our ears are OK. The ones belonging to Freddie’s mix engineer, apparently, are not.

Steer well clear.
Words Rob Boffard

Torae is the Brooklynite who sooner hits Europe than Manhattan for a show. Beatnik talked to him about growing up above a soul joint, aspiring to be nothing but an MC and lighting up energetic European crowds.

Torae is the pie and chips of rap.

You only go to him if you want uncomplicated, straight-up, raw, speaker-shaking hip-hop. There’s no bizarre imagery, no strange fashion quirks, no appearances on Jimmy Kimmel, no sexual dalliances with Nicki Minaj. Forget about it. With Torae, you get a kick, a snare, a chopped sample or two and a flow and voice that could cause the earth to crack from ten blocks away. That’s it.

The obvious question is, then: why bother? When you can gorge on a multi-course Heston Blumenthal-inspired meal of Odd Future foams, Mos Def reductions, Lil B tart and Kendrick Lamar infusions with a Mac Miller sauce, why ever go back to munching pie and chips on your sofa?

That’s what we asked Torae. Well, if we’re going to be strictly honest, we didn’t put it quite like that, but we did ask him why anybody should bother. What has he got to offer someone encountering him for the first time?

His voice is surprisingly airy and high-pitched, a world away from his gruff, block-shaking flow on record.

“If you love hip-hop music, if you grew up and were inspired by music made in the late 80s and early 90s, just that real, authentic music and that feeling that you got… if you come from that, then Torae is the artist you need to hear.”

If you are encountering Torae for the first time, then his new album For the Record is what you need to be looking at. Because even if you don’t come from the glory days of rap, it’s an amazing album. It’s not strictly the New Yorker’s first—he’s dropped a mixtape, Daily Conversation, and a collaborative album with producer Marco Polo—but he still calls it his debut.

As an introduction to his style, you simply can’t fault it, but more importantly, it’s just a kick-ass record. With people like DJ Premier and Pete Rock providing the backing, Torae serves up a gorgeous, meat-filled, crispy chunk of rap music. For the Record might be a pie, but it is the best-tasting pie on planet earth.

Torae’s music is deeply embedded in New York—not just in the rap tradition of EPMD and Public Enemy, but also in the geography of the place. He’s most closely associated with Coney Island, but spent his early years in Harlem. He and his family lived above Mr Soul’s, a club owned by his grandfather (evidently something of a nightlife mogul throughout the city). His mother and father worked there, and at night music from the club would filter up into the apartment above.

Torae—which is his real name, by the way, surname Carr—grew up in a living room bursting with vinyl and turntables. And when he and his family moved to Coney, living among the 18-story project buildings, rap music became part of his daily conversation.

There was no better environment to create the kind of musical approach Torae has. “Coney Island in the 80s was crazy,” he remembers. “Hip-hop was just emerging on the scene, and the city was [experiencing] the emergence of crime and drugs. The 80s was the crack era. I didn’t know any different, and I grew up with hip-hop. It wasn’t new to me, it was just what I grew up in. By the same token, I never grew up without seeing drug addicts around the neighbourhood. None of it was foreign to me, it was just all about growing up and learning. Coney Island was a crazy place coming up, and now that I’m an adult I can see that there’s more to life than the type of environment I grew up in.”

With his background, it’s interesting to ask Torae what he’d be doing if he hadn’t gotten into music. “If I wasn’t doing music at all? That’d have to be contingent on music not existing!” he laughs. “I’ve done a number of different things. I’ve worked with children in school settings, I’ve worked in banking, but all I ever wanted to do was music. From the time I was even able to think about a career, I never wanted to be a doctor or a policeman. I never had any other dreams or aspirations.”

Torae got his start in the ciphers and live shows of mid-90s New York, journeying out of his native area to Queens, Manhattan and beyond. He soon attracted the interest of seminal label Duck Down, and together he and the label masterminded Double Barrel, that superb album with Marco Polo. He’s not officially signed to the label—For The Record is an independent release—but he’s hugely complementary towards them. Through them, he got to work with 9th Wonder and New York legends Sean Price and Tek and Steele, as well as scoring those Pete Rock and Primo connects.

Oddly, Torae says he much prefers going out to perform in Europe. He doesn’t really tour the states, despite doing plenty of shows in his city itself—because, he says, New York street hip-hop is more attractive to people who have never set foot in New York.

“The scene [there] is a little different, a little weird,” he explains. “I like to go out and perform for the people that appreciate the music; they’re not jaded by hype or who’s on the radio or who’s on the magazine. They just wanna hear good music. The type of music I create is a little more authentic and it’s something that’s respected more in the culture. With the Europeans… it’s more about, these are the type of MCs, beats, music I like, so I wanna support those artists. Working with guys like Pete Rock, Premier and Large Professor—they make that sound that I feel like the European crowd, I feel like they get into that. It’s much easier to book a tour in Europe than do a run in the US.

“The first time I did Hip-Hop Kemp in the Czech Republic, I was out onstage by myself, and just to look out and see all those people, and their hands up, it’s really saying how the music travels. From a guy who started rapping and writing rhymes in his bedroom in Brooklyn to go out there and rock for ten, fifteen thousand people.”

This is the bit where we make a crack about pie in the sky.

———-

Buy For the Record
Torae on Twitter

Looptroop Rockers have been making music together for two decades. Their first live show had them rapping over instrumentals by Black Sheep, a group that rocked hi-tops, stone-washed jeans and colourful shirts, and called it quits in 1995. Looptroop, on the other hand, are showing no signs of slowing up.

We’re midway through 2002, and Looptroop just recorded what they feel is their best song to date.

The group has spent the summer in a hot studio—”so hot I’m in the mic-booth in nuttin’ but my boxers”, Promoe, one of four members in the group, would exclaim on one recording—and the long sessions have taken their toll.

But now, after defying hip-hop orthodoxy by recording a sung chorus for the first time, the pressure of perfectionism is ebbing, and Looptroop are dousing ‘Last Song’ in all kinds of goodness.

“That was the first time we worked with a singer,” recalls the group’s producer Embee. “So for that song, we wanted to incorporate everything; all the harmonies we could fit, for instance, to the point that we drowned out the original chorus and melody. We squeezed everything in there thinking, ‘This will be such a good song.’”

That the recording sessions for The Struggle Continues had been tense is significant. Looptroop’s first album, A Modern Day City Symphony from 2000, was the culmination of seven years’ worth of bedroom recordings fueled by passion, and crates of beer in exchange for live performances.

Their debut album brought about a few well-earned perks—foreign tours, a professional studio, even actual money for live performances—but a more important effect was what Looptroop were feeling during that summer of 2002: the need to top an anticipated debut album with a better second.

Expectations were high, and while they had come a long way as a group, creative differences could still cause arguments. Things were, at times, tense.

“Creative differences can improve the process of making an album as a whole. But if they turn into something negative it can really take its toll on the creative process,” says Supreme.

On The Struggle Continues, Looptroop’s punk steez remained—especially on tracks like ‘Musical Stampede’, ‘Get Ready’, and ‘Who Want It’—but it was the decision to delve deeper into personal emotions that made their celebrated second album a starting point rather than the career apex.

Timbuktu, a close friend of the group and now a majorly successful artist in Sweden, singled out Looptroop’s first love song, ‘Fly Away’, as their best work to date; for Looptroop, the pick was probably their already mentioned ode to life, ‘Last Song’.

“We were really happy about ‘Fly Away’. It’s like opening a door and realizing ‘shit… we can be in this country, too.’ That’s when you start daring a bit more,” says Supreme, before hinting at the reason for his group’s longevity:

“The safest alternative would have been to remain in the angriest version of Looptroop from the first album, because that was working. But our mentality has always been to develop our sound and try new things. And it’s also about getting older; we’re searching for new outlets.”

And there you have it. Experimentation, for better or for worse, has let rural Sweden’s hip-hop pioneers—around the time dial-up modems were still valued commodities, a disgruntled Stockholm elite dubbed Looptroop ‘hip-hop peasants’—develop their teen dream into a profession.

Five group albums and six solo ventures down the road, Looptroop have taken it there on a number of occasions. They’ve conquered extremes, including a fast-paced indie sound (‘The Building’ off Good Things), bonkers boom-bap (‘Chana Masala’ off Fort Europa and ‘Do’ from Professional Dreamers), and  electro-house (‘Naive’ off Good Things).

On his Swedish solo album, Kråksången, Promoe went the distance and found himself rapping over euro-disco. For any group steeped in such an orthodox sub-culture as underground hip-hop, the list of conventions to defy runs long. And by now, it’s fair to say that they’ve mastered things such as the hip-hop love song.

“Embee put a stop to that for a while. ‘No more love’—haha! ‘No more singing, it’s time to make a real hip-hop track,” says Cosmic.

“I just wanted one song with a rap chorus,” replies Embee, speaking of ‘Any Day’, one of the more obvious boom-bap songs on their latest album, Professional Dreamers.

“There are certain things Embee’s been requesting that we never deliver on,” says Supreme. “‘More space in the verses’—he’s been saying that for years but it’s something we’ve never been able to do.”

Looptroop may exchange feedback more freely than ever, but it is Embee who, 18 years after betting his shorts that the loud kid in the lunch line (Promoe) couldn’t rap to save his life, pulls the strings.

“The idea was to create a dreamlike sound,” Embee says of Professional Dreamers. “But not dreamlike in a beautiful way; a bit more like nightmares. That’s how most of the songs started out. But many of those original songs never made the final cut.”

“It felt like you had the clearest vision. It’s almost always like that,” replies Supreme. They’re talking about an album on which Promoe lets us know that “Embee already [knew] what the album’s supposed to sound like” on second single ‘Magic’.

Supreme continues: “That was one of the first songs we recorded for the album. We had just had that talk; Embee had just said that he knew, roughly, how the album would sound. But that’s how it is: as our producer, he’s responsible for how the music sounds. We still have our opinions, and try to push certain ideas, and stop other ones. But Embee is the boss.

“Although I think we’re more involved in all parts of the creative process these days. Embee is more involved in the writing, and we are more involved in the music, especially when it comes to arranging the songs. It’s never like I have an idea for the kick drum. That’s where his expertise lies.”

Embee’s wizardry permeates Looptroop’s albums. All five contain at least one song that ends in a suspenseful transition that takes everything one step further. The transition between ‘Sweep Me Away’ and ‘Blow Me Away’ is one example.”

“That usually happens when I’ve been working on the same song for a long time, arranging it and so on. That’s when I find new things in the track, and often it becomes an entirely different song,” says the producer, who made his solo debut with a fine jazz-influenced EP, Embeetious Art, in 2000.

“It’s fair to say [that I get bored of the original song. I think those little bridges reward the listener. And that's what happens when you sit with the same music for a long, intensive work period."

That these guys now talk about their music—or at least aspects of it—as work work goes some way to explain the title Professional Dreamers. Looptroop have born both the freedom and responsibilities that come with venturing as long-haul independents.

Depending on which song off the latest album you consult, Looptroop carry the weight of their work with gratitude ('Professional Dreamers', 'Business & Pleasure'), a loss for words ('Joseph') or the tears of a sad clown ('Late Nights Early Mornings' or Promoe's 'Blood Sugar').

"I think I'm more reminded of [our music being a job] when we’re not touring. Because then, ahead of a release, it feels like a regular office job. I’m in front of a computer emailing and calling people,” says Supreme.

Embee: “For me, all aspects of creating a new album amount to long work periods. First, you’re creating the songs, which can be done over two or three years’ time. At that time you’re not even thinking about the final product, you just choose the ones you want to keep in the end.

“And then the work begins; first you complete the songs, and then comes arranging and mixing—the really tough part; those become 16- to 18-hour work days. Very hardcore. Then you can chill, briefly, during the mastering, but after that comes the interview and PR-stuff. And this time around, that’s taken a lot of time.”

Cosmic interjects: “If you look at the amount of time you’re actually on stage working, or in the studio creating music, you’ll see that it’s a fraction of the time we put into our music. Traveling is work, too—just getting from A to B to do the next show.”

Some routines may have settled, but Looptroop—who go by Looptroop Rockers since 2008, by the way—are steadily pushing their creative horizons.

They had come far the summer they employed a singer for the first time. But they still had a long way to go to pen the closing track on Professional Dreamers, a song about when music is not so much a routine as a matter of life and death.

“I don’t know if we’ve discovered that many new things,” says Supreme. “But I do feel like we’ve refined the recipe. ‘Joseph’ is a song that was very hard to write. We had wanted to do it, but it took a quite a few years before we were able to.”

Here’s to a few more.

——————–

Looptroop’s website, Facebook, Twitter

Buy Professional Dreamers

* Unfortunately Cosmic, Looptroop Rockers’ fourth member, couldn’t make the photo shoot

At age 26 Thomas Mackenzie Bell, or Toddla T to all who meet him has definitely outgrown his stabilisers. Since dropping his debut album Skanky back in 2009, his sonic influence has gone warp speed. It was a bashy record that blended weighty beat and bass fluctuations from the big bits of hip-hop, garage and electronic with a strong coat of dancehall.

From that day he has become one of the hottest DJ/producers out of the UK. Gaining production credits with Roots Manuva’s, Tinchy Stryder, Jammer and Trojan Sound System to name a few, and remixing a string of top artist that runs longer then a bus ticket from London to Sheffield.

But the limelight hasn’t tamed the Yorkshire natives’ rebellious and childish quality. Toddla is a joker by nature and a party starter by default.

In between his regular slot on BBC Radio 1’s ‘In New DJs We Trust’ and constantly touring across the UK, Europe and America, its been very hard to pin him down.

But that we finally did, and with his exciting new album Watch Me Dance and a recent love affair with Jamaica in mind we grab a coffee and head to a lonely playground, the location for our photo shoot, to hear all about it.

“I guess I was more brave than my first record, in doing a girly song or things that weren’t necessarily more cool.” He explains, citing the main difference between the two releases.

“I thought ‘fuck it’. I sit at home and listen to rnb and soul—why not put that into the tune and not worry that my friends might think I’ve gone soft?”

Released on Ninja Tune, Watch Me Dance is described as being influenced after years of dj-ing in the clubs. But it steers far from a trend you might expect—or fear, depending on your predicament—given the description. It also boasts the same amount of fun as his first album.

“I’m in the clubs more than ever now and I hear music sonically louder than ever, so even though I’m hearing dj’s playing more cutting edge dance music, I still wanted to keep my influence. The sonic sound of the club scene was influential, but what I really wanted to do was give the record a wider range.”

Leaning in his strong accent he admits: “I was proper nervous about releasing some tunes on there.”

He needn’t have been. A brave move that has paid off ten fold, what Toddla has done for his second album is the rare quality—unit underground fans and steal pop enthusiast in one large swoop. It is infectiously catchy yet comfortingly grounding and cool.

“Like ‘Take Me Back’ I thought people would slate me, and a lot did, but a lot of people were surprised how into it they were. I really didn’t want to make the same record again. Hence another reason I leant away from so much of the Caribbean influence that you’ll find in the first one”

The album still has those early influences, but Watch Me Dance offers more variation with early dance and pop nods.

Switch, one part of Major Lazer, has been an avid fan over the years. So much so he recently took Toddla to Jamaica, championing his friend to all that will listen.

“It was the second time I’d ever been out there” he explains. “Switch was in London and asked if I wanted to come to Jamaica. I was like wicked! I chased it up and went. I thought this was amazing. I wrote with him but not just that. I went to studios I always wanted to go, I met people I always wanted to meet. I made links.”

“When I got dropped off I went straight to Tuff Gong [studio] and thought ‘fucking hell, this is insane!’ I worked with Busy Signal, next day went to met Stephen “di genius” Mcgregor and Elephant Man. I went to Beenie Man’s flat. Then back to Tuff Gong and engineered there with Wayne Marshall.  Then I started making music with Wayne Marshall…”

“Then I went and got some dubs, went to some dances. The second time I went with them [Switch] because of their profile and ‘Pon Da Floor’ was busting at the time, it was kind of easier to walk through those doors”

His tropical timetable sounds out of this world, and I can’t help getting swiped up in Toddla’s excitement for his current opportunities.

“It was a wicked way of seeing the music scene over there. Now it continues to get easier every time I go over there. I can DJ there, I can shoot videos there.”

But it was the island’s beating heart of music that made the biggest impact.

“I think there’s more studios there than square mile than anywhere else, which is insane. Especially when you think about how high end the studios are amongst these really run-down areas. It’s such a contrast which proves how important music is to Jamaicans.”

“Its tight nit like in the UK. For example I never could imagine working with such artists now, people I looked up to like Ms Dynamite, Jammer , Zed Bias.. but once you get to that place its about everyone just making music and getting on with it. It’s the same there.”

The tiny Zion of bass, the Jamaican sound system has made the island such a passionate beacon music around the world.

“Exactly. Especially when you consider the influence the island has outside of it, its fucking huge! I’d say even more than England, especially over the years. Its mental”

“The radio over there is mental too. They’ll do a juggle of new rhythms and then they’ll play like a dance track that is totally bizarre and then play something wired like ‘Cotten Eye Joe’! Ha ha. The radio surprises me every time I’m there.”

Grinning from ear to ear he tells another story.

“We went to one dance, I think I’ve got a clip on my phone, downtown, where they were playing everything. All this American hip-hop, rnb, dancehall and then they dropped ‘Chumbawamba’—I get know down and I get up again…”

He breaks out in an imitation daggering dance. “And there was this big girl on a bench singing along. I was like WTF! Haha. It’s very unpredictable from time to time, but that’s what’s great from an outsider. Cos just when you think you’ve grasped it they flip it!”

I’m envious. You sense Toddla has bags full of stories from his travels but time is running out.

“Well there’s a shop downtown which is 100% bootleg—so there is definitely demand, haha” he explains as conversation stirs to 30-year love affair between Jamaican rudeboys and Clarks shoes. “My friend said he’s gonna go over and take a trunk full of Clarks and pay everyone in that!”

And even though the island has a reputation for crime and murder, with that in mind Toddla leaves the topic with a grounding thought.

“It’s a poor country and people need to eat, they need to eat—so some obviously will go to extremes. But people do that here. There are areas of course but I wouldn’t do those in England either. But the love is so strong there. The Rastafarian thing is such an influence there and its all about love and unity. It’s so much fun, its wicked! You should go!”

We finish with a quick Q& A:

How do you like your eggs?

“Scrambled preferably, but usually I have poached ‘cos its easier to make”

Who cuts your hear?

“My friend Mel.”

Favourite Takeaway?

“There’s this Indian place in west called ‘Holy Cow’. I like chilli lamb!”

Favourite place to relax?

“On my sofa, in my gaf!”

Favourite drink?

“Guinness, standard.”

First kiss?

“In a caravan when I was like 13. Her mum and dad had a caravan. A holiday home! Ha ha.”

Essential thing when you travel?

“Laptop and headphones”

What would you spend the Euro Millions jackpot on?

“Er, dunno..I could be super generous and buy my auntie a boat! That would be fun. To see them so excited would be wicked.”

Best Thing about Sheffield?

“The best thing is its worst thing, which is its village mentality. Everyone knows everyone which is great ‘cos you meet people organically. But then again if you split up with your girlfriend you’re gonna know who she goes out with next ha ha!”

————

Todda T website
Ninja Tune website

A few years back, Los Angeles’ beat cosmonaut, Flying Lotus, decided to start a label that would channel his endless energies into a solidified movement. Lotus’ releases, particularly the pioneering Cosmogramma, are musical clashes of civilations. The artists on his label tend to follow suit, but mostly to a lesser degree. Lorn’s electronic beats do that FlyLo spazz from time to time, and Teebs refines the label founder’s more psychedelic moments—but nothing gets quite as schizophrenic as FlyLo’s work.

Then came Thundercat. His moniker might precipitate music steeped in recycled visual culture, but that isn’t really the case. The Golden Age of Apocalypse jitters between styles of music but maintains a sort of jazz and r&b foundation. But it jitters in a good way—probably thanks to Lotus’ involvement in the production of this record. He may just be the very reason for the medley, too.

No matter how unexpected, the shifts tend to fit—whether it’s acoustic soul or robotic ambience we’re talking about. The galactic funk streaks of ‘Daylight’ lean towards Dam-Funk, ‘Walkin” towards the better parts of Phonte and Nicolay as Foreign Exchange. Thundercat’s weapon of choice, the bass guitar, is prevalent throughout. Not least in that magnificent switch from trippy swing to a roaring break at the end of ‘It Really Doesn’t Matter to You’ before ‘Jamboree’, an instrumental funk number, kicks in.

Those twenty seconds epitomize the idea; Brainfeeder is about big thoughts—condensed into deliberate concepts, executed with full commitment. The Golden Age of Apocalypse is no different.

words Sven Hultberg Carlsson

Thundercat: It Really Doesn't Matter to You

Thundercat: Jamboree

——————

Buy The Golden Age of Apocalypse

Michael Rapaport’s award winning film documenting the highs and lows of Hip Hop’s Golden Era’s most celebrated group A Tribe Called Quest, ‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’, is premiering at KOKO. A must see for any hip-hop fan, the legendary Phife Dawg will also be dropping an exclusive live show with Spin Doctor. Big!

Get tickets now! Hit up Soundcrash or The Doctors Orders