Nakamura fuses odd samples, like the hook from the 1970 tune “Of Cities and Escapes” by Canadian pop group The Poppy Family on the track “Madness” to my favorite bass line on the album. Octagon (with Kool Keith), and solidifies his vision with more intelligent and digestible rhymes from Del. Deltron 3030 takes the idea of Nakamura’s previous effort, Dr. Throughout this tale of hip-hop sci-fi set in the year 3030, Del delivers abstract ideas set against Nakamura’s signature production. It’s the work of mastermind Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator (Dan Nakamura) and Kid Koala, along with contributions from Damon Albarn and others.ĭeltron 3030 is Del and Dan the Automator’s concept album of a dystopian society with only one hope: Deltron Zero. The importance of their records are well-known, but my go-to record is more like The Soft Bulletin of hip-hop, Deltron 3030.
Picking those groups are like picking The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Nirvana for me, respectively. I will spare you the obvious favorites from Run DMC, Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest. Picking a favorite hip-hop record is – for me at least – a difficult task. Pittman dissects a not-so-obvious classic, an album whose much-anticipated follow-up is rumored to be finished with a possible release later this year.
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Toss in a few guests - including Prince Paul, Blur's Damon Albarn, MC Paul Barman, Sean Lennon, Peanut Butter Wolf and others - and you've got a weird, great record, one that'll hook you with its lighthearted spirit and sense of adventure.The 55th installment of I Used to Love H.E.R., a series in which artists/bloggers/writers discuss their most essential or favorite hip-hop albums and songs, comes from Harris Pittman, bassist for the Los Angeles-based Henry Clay People, who are playing Crescent Ballroom on Thursday night in support of their new album Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives, out now on TBD Records. This is illustrated from the get-go on Deltron 3030: "State of the Nation" samples church choirs and a pedal-steel guitar, a Stravinskian string freakout and a simple yet compelling beat, and the end product is both otherworldly and weirdly sensible his recombinations are as innovative as they are imaginative, as beguiling as they are beautiful. The king of the disc, though, is Dan the Automator, the most innovative rap producer on the scene, an artist whose knowledge and appreciation of music (as opposed to hip-hop) guides his tracks in crazy-great directions. He guides tracks with his scratching, zipping in every once in a while to offer an aural exclamation point. Koala is more a navigator than a captain on Deltron. When Del steps up, he's one of the best, spitting out a style as captivating as a grand Coltrane tenor solo. His lyrics have vitality and spunk he squeezes dialogue next to narrative asides, omniscient comments next to thrilling alliterative workouts. The result is a style that's immediately recognizable and gloriously unique. But leave it to Del, the Automator and Koala to hit the sci-fi style with the most accuracy and come up with a concept album that's equal parts cheese and adventure.ĭel tha Funkee Homosapien's delivery has never sounded fresher: His flow is wonderfully rigid, nailing internal and external beats with precision, and he enunciates words as though each is locked in its own little box, then piles them on top of each other neatly and rhythmically, giving them an ebb and a flow, the combination of which creates momentum.
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Propelling funk into outer space has been a time-honored tradition since P-Funk shot their rockets in the '70s (and earlier, if you count Sun Ra) Kool Keith visits outer space on a regular basis, and the Wu Tang occasionally zip up there. Del rhymes, Dan produces and Koala scratches, and though anyone tracking the output of these three players knows that, individually, they can get it done, as a threesome locked in a flying saucer, they buzz. Those not up to date on the future-school 3030-style names will better know Deltron Zero as Del tha Funkee Homosapien, the Cantankerous Captain Aptos as Dan the Automator and Skiznod as Kid Koala. We hope not, because, trapped in the spaceship, rhyming, scratching and cutting beats into the black-box recorder, the three have dropped one of the best albums of 2000, even if it was made in the future. Shouldn't Deltron be able to take a break from Aptos and Skiznod? Who can blame him? He, the Cantankerous Captain Aptos and Skiznod the Boy Wonder have been cooped up in a flying saucer for years, buzzing their way back to the Earth - or what's left of it.
"I'm sick of looking at the inside of space stations/Time for Deltron to take a vacation," rhymes Deltron Zero, exasperated and desperate for a breath of fresh blunt.
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