Reviews
 Rolling
Stone Chronic (1992)
Wrapped
in a Batman cloak of larger-than-life mayhem and straining
its pants with adolescent horniness, it's beloved by millions,
black and white; they devour its percussive snap, crackle
and pop. To adult white people, it's anathema. But California
hardcore rap is simply one of the most imaginative sounds
in the world today. Its radical wordplay mainstreaming the
scatological cut-up poetics that William Burroughs debuted
in the '50s, it hurdles the aesthetic line in the sand that
original rap drew when it began to rethink rhythm, compositional
method and studio technique so decisively that it redefined
the very perception of music itself. Along with the 12-tone
scale of modern classical fare, Ornette Coleman's free jazz
and the triumph of punk attitude, the rap revolution is
20th-century fact.
At
its vanguard are the gangstas. Formerly of the trailblazing
N.W.A, Dr. Dre is the form's wizard producer. High-volume
hypnotism, "The Chronic," like the marijuana it's named
for, alters the senses. Mixing loping beats, smooth and
gruff voices from South Central, giggles, snarls and reggae
intonations, it updates the aural movies P-Funk (and psychedelia)
once made. Its sounds are as raw and complex and real as
life. The assaultive Dre and the more relaxed Snoop Doggy
Dogg (the latter formally charged with murder in September)
may be, to put it mildly, problematic souls, and romanticizing
criminal behavior sucks. This music, however, cannot be
refuted or easily forgotten.
With
"Black Sunday," Cypress Hill make baroque rap so arcane
in its samples (Bobbie Gentry, Black Sabbath, Joe Zawinul)
and verbal references (sumo wrestling, Louis Armstrong,
"The Wizard of Oz") that the mind reels. This crew, too,
is made up of potheads. And next to their musical inventiveness,
black-Latino hipness and zany comedy, most rappers seem
as lame as old hippie bands did next to Frank Zappa. Skull-strewn,
their album art looks B-movie Gothic, but what's truly scary
is their titanic, subversive intelligence.(RS 672/673)
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