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My feature on Chicago beatscapers Molemen, from the new (and electronic) issue of Elemental:
MOLEMEN: Second City Sound. By Michael Pollock. Photo by R. Gardiner.
Flashes of Chicago, 1980-something: Spanish horns blowing through speakers on the North Side. Scores of poor kids in gangs on the South Side. Hip-hop bridging blacks and Latinos on the West Side. And then closer: A cousin’s head smashed in by a punchbowl; shards of glass never pulled out. Casio keyboards. P-Funk and Earth, Wind & Fire; Jane’s Addiction and The Cure. “Easter eggs.”
Can the scattered pieces of separate pasts—some joyous, some painful—be picked up and used again, this time as part of a shared outlook for the sake of art? Where does influence come from?
With producers Molemen, music is fabric. Snares and kicks marry each other and birth rhyme offspring. Like The Alchemist, their beats don’t so much make the tracks as they make the artists behind them feel comfortable enough to make whatever they want. The client roster covers all: Vakill, Naledge, Juice, Rhymefest, MF Doom, Cage & Copywrite, L the Head Toucha, Capital D, Slug, C-Rayz Walz, 7L & Esoteric, Percee P, Grand Daddy I.U., Buck 65 & Sage Francis, Louis Logic. The results hardly vary. Molemen’s three members—Panik, Memo and PNS—make beats on their own, then brainstorm to patch together compilations and albums. It’s a fascinating experiment, like giving three kids the same coloring book but then handing out markers, crayons, pencils and pens and seeing who grabs what.
The sounds are random; the songs become mini-movies. A track like Vizion & Visual’s “1,000 Yd. Stare,” found on last year’s odds-and-ends Lost Sessions, gets its elevation from keyboard burps that share a lot in common with Gang Starr’s “Mass Appeal.” But then the grinding guitars walk in and blow the high. What were we thinking? It happens often, that reality check. Sometimes we think we’re ready for it. A familiar sample is at first comforting and then adopts a new meaning. On Vakill’s “The King Meets the Sickest,” featuring Royce da 5’9”, Panik takes the same strings-and-piano swelling in Young Buck’s gutter-bluesy “Bonafide Hustler.” He doesn’t change much, laying a hollow kick underneath the melody that echoes the song’s gotta-get-mine hunger. But it’s his ear that matters. To witness Vakill and Royce trade lines like the best rappers that never made it over such musical conviction redefines hustle.
Panik had doubts about flipping the sample. “Me and Vakill were going, ‘Should we use this?’ We decided not to, and I came up with this other beat. But a week later, Vakill’s like, ‘Man, fuck that. We’re using it.’ [laughs] We made it our song.”
Born Edward Zamudio, Panik’s the kid who grew up on the North Side, latching onto Parliament/Funkadelic records when he was just 5 years old. He spent two years living in Mexico, and the music of his Latin heritage would impact him for a lifetime. But it was hip-hop that had road signs.
An outcast in Adidas tracksuits, Panik had to travel to the South Side for a taste. “Chicago was mostly house music,” he says. “There was hardly any hip-hop going on.” Panik hit a couple of rap circles in the early ‘90s and took notice of a fierce spitter named Vakill. The two clicked and soon began fumbling their way through recording sessions. Molemen were born.
A few years later, Panik met South Side native Korey “Memo” Mitchell, who was looking for someone with a drum machine so he could work on tracks with a then-unknown Rhymefest. PNS (born Juvenal Robles) was a West Side DJ and former graffiti artist obsessed with Grandmaster Flash who joined the group in 1996. With a foundation laid, the three began producing records on their own but collecting them under the Molemen moniker. They had separate contacts that often intertwined—Panik was tight with Vakill and Juice; Memo worked with Cage and Copywrite; PNS recorded Doom and Slug—but the Molemen reputation grew as one. By 2001 they had enough material to put out Ritual of the…, a compilation highlighting the group’s memorable collaborations.
It’s easy to listen to packages like Ritual and Lost Sessions and mistake them for the ideas of just one producer. Molemen tracks are amazingly cohesive from one to the next, adjective-laden pieces of work that borrow plenty from Havoc and Premier but that never dwell on imitation. The Molemen sound is dark and edgy. Gloomy. People say it’s gritty, Memo tells me. Thinking geography has something to do with it, I suggest to Panik that the music feels like a cold winter day—like Chicago. “People tell me certain things about my beats, so I guess I do have a sound,” he says. “I’m just not aware of it. I never pay attention to what’s coming out. I’m just making what I like to make.”
Memo’s much more straightforward with his intentions. “I would be a complete asshole if I were to push a mainstream beat onto our fans,” he says blankly. “That’s lunacy. It pretty much does away with whatever we’ve built up until this point.”
Of Molemen’s three members, Memo has had perhaps the most organic musical upbringing. He learned to record on a cheap Casio keyboard and got into hip-hop when he heard a kid on his street reciting lyrics to rap songs. Later he would make beats in his basement with Rhymefest, who lived around the block.
Memo fell in love with the radio and studied the production styles of DJ Mark the 45 King, The Bomb Squad and Marley Marl. But it was Premier who set the standard. “He’s a god to me,” Memo says. “I’d go to a Gang Starr album—that’s what I used to look for when I wanted to find a good beat. I wanted to sound as good as Premo.”
PNS, too, worshipped the Brooklyn producer. But he also paid attention to pop and rock bands like The Smiths, Duran Duran and Jane’s Addiction, a peace offering to his girlfriends at the time since they couldn’t stand the hardcore hip-hop he would listen to. Knowing the average rap fan had no idea who these groups were, PNS would craft mash-ups and sample obscure recordings as an inside joke to friends.
“It came from me sampling the theme song from this Spanish television show we used to watch,” PNS says. “Every Latin kid that’s come up to me has mentioned it. We call it Easter eggs—we leave them everywhere.”
PNS was, and still is, a diehard Cure fan. He was surprised to learn that his idol, Premier, loved the band, too. “I read an interview where Premo said he flew to Texas to see them in concert,” PNS says. “And this is the guy making all the gutter tracks.”
“It comes from the production part of our minds where, when we go digging, we buy all types of music,” he adds. “You start going down different roads. If you’re just straight hip-hop, you’ll never grab emotion.”
The Cure connection puts everything into perspective. The bleakness and despair in albums like Seventeen Seconds and Disintegration haunt the Molemen aesthetic and that of its flagship artist, Vakill. Miles apart lyrically, the conceptual imagery is nearly identical.
Vakill is a concrete-hard near-casualty of the South Side mid-‘80s crack era. He grew up with 15 cousins in his grandmother’s house; two of them were in rival gangs. He was maybe 10 or 11, he can’t remember which, when he saw a glass punchbowl shatter another cousin’s head, pieces of which remained lodged in his skull. Afraid pulling out the glass would mean brain damage, doctors didn’t fully operate. Years later, unable to deal with the pain, Vakill’s cousin committed suicide with a .38 Special.
That was one thing, the tip of an iceberg of frustration. On record, Vakill’s voice boils over with this kind of nervous energy. On the phone, he’s measured and calm but just as manic. He talks about loyalty, about carving out a career in hip-hop. “I understand what Rashid [Common] was doing on Electric Circus, how he was about to go left,” Vakill says. “That’s why I don’t want brackets put on my music. I don’t wanna be a backpacker; I don’t wanna be a gangster. I want to be an artist.”
The songs on his latest album, Worst Fears Confirmed, position Vakill as an anomaly: a lyricist embedded in street culture, the conscious MC who’s still got a set of hands. “It’s honest expression,” Vakill says of the record, which follows his debut, The Darkest Cloud, by almost three years. “I’m not trying to be a goody two-shoes and I’m not trying to be an evil demon. I’m just trying to be human.”
Sonically, Panik and Memo took Worst Fears to some scary places. Soaring strings, crushing piano chords, lots of atmosphere. At times it feels like the soundtrack to a psychological thriller or one of those Japanese horror films. But commercially it’s stuck. It’s uncompromising, with only the soulful “Serpent & the Rainbow” capable of taking a crack at radio. Despite endorsements from national publications, Worst Fears has been sentenced to the underground.
No one seems worried. Common’s Resurrection suffered a similar fate, after all, as did early albums by fellow Chi-Town warrior Twista. As with everything that’s happened to Molemen, Panik thinks the reward lies in waiting. “I think of Illmatic and Reasonable Doubt, and how those records didn’t sell as much as the albums after that,” he says. “It sets the stage for us. Instantly it won’t sell, but as time goes by, people will always remember it.”
Chicago City Limits Vol. 2 by the Molemen, and Vakill’s Worst Fears Confirmed are available now. For more information, visit molemen.com.
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Semi-rejected piece submitted to PopMatters a few months ago. Never got around to making all the requested edits, lost interest, it was a non-paying gig, etc.
Panic at the Disco: How James Murphy’s Dance-Art Is Making Art Dance
I have a fantasy, and in this fantasy James Murphy and I are friends. It is unclear how long we’ve been friends, what the particular dynamics of our friendship are, what sort of social barriers have been removed that would allow us to be friends, or even how we met. Are we neighbors? Did we grow up together? It’s not important. What matters is what we’ve become: kindred spirits obsessed with pop music, an alliance in the name of dance-punk-art and self-aware cool that makes us both incredibly paranoid and prone to rambling.
So James Murphy (I call him James but not Murph, since that was the name of the drummer in Dinosaur Jr.; that James and I arrive at this at the same time makes us both laugh) and I are in my apartment, which is ideally in London but could be in Chicago or Philadelphia; all we need is a skyline; and this apartment is vaguely decorated with mural-sized posters of art that are somehow obscure and familiar at the same time, comforting yet challenging, and there’s a dismal beige couch that looks like haystacks pushed together, a sort of wrap-around, and on this couch James is sitting cross-legged while I’m leaning forward in a chair, waiting his response to a CD I’ve put on.
Here’s where the fantasy gets muddy: there is no response. I play him “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine. I play him “Wake Up” by The Arcade Fire. I play him “Losing My Edge” by his own band. I play him all my favorite records, and even some records I don’t like, but there is no dialogue; we can’t seem to connect verbally. I just can’t honestly imagine what two guys who think they know everything about music would have to say to each other that hasn’t already been said before.
This is a point that rings loud and clear in almost every LCD Soundsystem record. A sort of where-do-we-go-from-here undertone that suggests the only way out is in, as in inward. Looking at ourselves in the context of our narrow culture and the actions of those around us, asking questions we already know the answers to: “Bear in mind / We all fall behind” from “Disco Infiltrator”; “Everybody makes mistakes…” from “Tribulations”; “Nobody’s falling in love / Everybody here needs a shove” from “Beat Connection”; and the best example, found in the crass version of “Yeah”: “Everybody keeps on talking about it / Nobody’s getting it done.”
It’s these communal admissions that produce LCD’s brand of ironic dance rock, at once rhythmic hypnosis and cerebral bitch-slapping. Dance music, traditionally and ideally, is designed as mindless escapism. It’s food for the body; the mind is always elsewhere. It’s nameless, faceless and completely interchangeable. Dance rock of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s attempted one step further, incorporating actual song structures into the fray, but hardly fared much better. (Murphy pointed this out in a Magnet interview from May 2005 where he scoffed at the history of dance rock represented by fleeting bands like EMF and Jesus Jones.)
There is, of course, that obnoxious beat, an incessant pulsing that makes everyone who hears it want to fight. LCD isn’t without it, but theirs is put on with a monkey wrench. The drums in the crass version of “Yeah” sound homemade, organic. They sound real. So do the bassline and the blips and the hiccup synths. The tribal funk breakdown at six and a half minutes in — and then the trashcan-as-percussion at eight minutes-plus — carry all the appeal of a live street band and make useful indulgence of Murphy’s love of weirdly-crafted hip-hop. Other things, like the amazing “Yr City’s a Sucker,” have these chimes and woodblock sounds wrapped in floating, dreamy keyboards and feel like they could end at any moment, until they do, and it’s like you’ve been pulled violently back into reality. These aren’t just beats, they’re instructions for living.
Last year, Village Voice whipping boy Nick Sylvester conducted an experiment with Murphy as part of a Pitchfork feature where Sylvester more or less lived out the fantasy I described above. He played Murphy records, Murphy reacted. There were some odd songs but no odd choices; Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” made as much sense as Ying Yang Twins’ “The Whisper Song” when you consider how innovative they both sound and how embarrassing it would be to sing either one aloud. What struck me most about their exchange is how a guy with such an appreciation for pop music (that’s Murphy) could rely on the most simplistic elements in his own art: pulse, handclap, cowbell, more pulse, more cowbell. He’s still making thinly veiled dance music. But then it hit me that a good chunk of the LCD/DFA appeal is how well Murphy comes off as the biggest music fan ever. If he’s able to dissect someone else’s stuff with such precision, well, imagine what he’s capable of in due time.
But what Murphy has already managed is impressive not just sonically but aesthetically, especially when you realize Murphy seems like he’s more fascinated with the construct of dance music than he is with actually listening to it. He uses disco beats the way Gang of Four used disco basslines; that is, they’re a tool. It’s an appropriation made even more interesting when you take into account Murphy’s influences, mainly the twisted post-punk that killed off the punk that killed off disco. He’s a Fall guy, channeling Mark E. Smith’s sinus infection vocals perfectly in “Movement” and swinging Public Image guitar whacks in “On Repeat.” (“Tired” is a bonfire party in hell.)
The point of all this isn’t a belated analysis of the LCD record (although it is the kind of album whose merits are better examined in hindsight). The album, coupled with the singles disc as one package, makes a bigger statement of how this thing once called dance punk is really closer to dance-art, and that its documents should be judged individually, free of the associations they conjure and that we’re all too familiar with. Murphy isn’t carrying the weight of a movement on his back, and he’s not setting social fires like John Lydon or Public Enemy or even Sufjan Stevens for that matter, but he’s urgent nonetheless; he’s aware of what we don’t need and he’s careful not to put out mindless dancefloor trash he couldn’t look in the eye in the morning. What he’s doing is still reckless, unpredictable in the way Jane’s Addiction were able to explore on impulse but still have a defined purpose. His is the party everyone wants to be at but only a few are confident they can get into. For the rest of us, we’re left to fantasize.
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This has been done so many times: a tear-jerking trip down the memory lane of that perennial favorite of hip-hop journalism that’s got way too many problems on its hands right now, The Source. Before we go too deep here, let me first say that the reason The Source’s reputation has remained even somewhat intact – despite the well-documented suicidal tendencies of Dave Mays and Ray “Benzino” Scott – has less to do with the quality of writing its scribes were producing circa ‘90-’96 (though it was very good) and instead has a whole lot to do with how few options there were early on if you were a hip-hop fan looking to read about people who weren’t on MTV. There was no XXL, no Vibe, no Scratch, no Ozone. No AllHipHop, or Spine, or SOHH. No Byron Crawford, or Status Ain’t Hood, or Pitchfork, or Okayplayer, or Cocaine Blunts. Spin was busy discovering Neil Young and Rolling Stone thought Run-D.M.C. was the only rap group that would ever matter. The Source was having a field day.
The magazine recently celebrated its 200th issue — a huge achievement in the publishing industry, doubly so if you have any idea how f’ed things have been at The Source since the mid-to-late ’90s: accusations of sexual harrassment, guns on conference tables, speculation of extortion, blatant conflicts of interest, bounced paychecks, the biggest record company on earth pulling its advertising. Putting out a magazine every month is difficult enough without having to worry about which member of Made Men you’ll have to deal with should you choose to eat the last donut or inadvertently support one of the many artists and/or labels Benzino might be beefing with that week.
The anniversary issue (slated June 2006, even though it didn’t come out until July; The Source’s production schedule and/or distribution also is f’ed) has Ice Cube on the cover. Cube put out a great indie record (not that kind of indie) about two months ago; I reviewed it. He’s also got a storied past with The Source: Amerikkka’s Most Wanted (1990) was one of the first hip-hop albums to receive the magazine’s ballyhooed five-mic rating (they were turntables back then); years later, Cube and Westside Connection trashed The Source and East Coast-based pubs like it and received nearly the same score for Bow Down. When The Source did their revisionist history a few years ago, they added a half-mic to Death Certificate’s previous 4.5 rating and gave Straight Outta Compton a posthumous five mics; in effect telling its readers that Ice Cube released no less than three classic albums in three years, a point that’s sort of impossible to argue with.
Beyond the cover, the issue itself is a bit hollow. There’s a great round-up of overlooked rap albums, hosted by Little Brother, who make a few interesting comments, especially about Madvillainy. There’s a look at some things released since 2000 that didn’t get five mics but that are largely considered classics by the hip-hop community, with poorly written explanations as to why. These records are: 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Kanye West’s The College Dropout, Common’s Be, The Game’s The Documentary, Jay-Z’s The Black Album, and Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. With the exception of Be, I don’t think any of these records are classics, either; if anything, I’d replace Speakerboxxx/The Love Below with Stankonia or ATLiens and The College Dropout with Late Registration and try to work those angles.
One of the more embarrassing components, besides the graphic design and layout, which look rushed and wholly intern-ish, is a list of the top MCs dating back to 1988. A lame attempt to kiss Interscope’s white ass becomes apparent when you look at years 2000 and 2002, both of which have Eminem at number one. I won’t argue against those choices, but it feels like they came up this whole other big list just to do that. Confusingly, neither The Marshall Mathers LP nor The Eminem Show made it onto the “why they didn’t get five mics” list mentioned above.
Now for the shocker: The Source brought back two of its most important staffers, James Bernard and Reginald Dennis, to pen columns for the anniversary issue. If you’re one of the people who actually read The Source while these guys were there (and doesn’t just remember their perceived contributions vicariously), this is huge. They were both good reads; Bernard made a Sly Stoned remark about this column being a one-shot deal, and Bernard finally got some closure, since his column was unceremoniously dropped back in the mid-’90s.
I remember Dennis’ original “Dennis Files”; he once did this open call for readers to submit their first memories of hip-hop, and someone (it may have been Dennis, come to think of it) talked about their father bringing home a 45 of “Superfly” that had this strange, instrumental B-side, where the words “super” and “fly” would echo over and over in a way that was akin to rapping and scratching. I was in love with that idea for the longest time; I never bothered to hunt down the song.
Along with Dennis, The Source can brag of employing some of the finest hip-hop writers ever to do it, people like Ronin Ro, Bonz Malone, dream hampton, Matty C, Adario Strange … The territory was new and fresh and the scribes were so eager and yet so perfectly jaded, journalistically speaking. Among the stuff I remember: Ronin Ro pulling a Hunter Thompson by getting drunk and falling in love with some Japanese girl (maybe a stripper) while he was covering Luke in Japan; Malik from Illegal, probably around 13 or 14 at the time, calling dream hampton a bitch because she wrote down that he called one of the dudes in P.M. Dawn a fag; a three-part series on crack in the ’80s that featured a well-educated white boy’s rise and fall on the pipe, something that still shocks me now; a hilarious review of a Hi-C record that totally played up all the stereotypes the album was trying (and failing) to capitalize on.
I lived for reviews like that, but it’s The Source’s features I wish I’d paid more attention to, as they’re the gauntlet every good writer must deal with sooner or later. I spoke to a journalism class a few months ago and one of the students brought up how The Source sucks because they write about the Dirty South too much (this is not the same reason I think The Source sucks, by the way). I’m pretty sure I mentioned how different things were 10, 15 years ago, how respected The Source was, lack of competition, etc., before the professor (thankfully) reigned me in. I felt stupid for having said anything at all. I felt old, bitter, achingly nostalgic. At that moment, I was Kevin Arnold: I missed The Source like a girlfriend I wanted to get back together with.
Lately I’ve been reaching out. I have a box of Sources, from the very first issue I bought (Geto Boys, Feb. ‘92), to one of the last (Jermaine Dupri, Jan. ‘02), sitting at the bottom of a closet in my parents’ house. I’ve been thinking more and more about what to do with them. Some of those issues are still clear as day: the one with Nas’ five-mic review for Illmatic; the Dr. Dre gun-to-head cover story from late ‘92, right before Death Row took off; Scarface, Spice 1 and MC Eiht in a convertible with the top down in the summer of ‘94, speaking on reality rap, which never took off. Smaller details are just as important: some duded named Fesu getting four mics for a CD I don’t think ever came out; Fat Tape playlists I can still recite in sequential order. The Source took itself very seriously, but they were even more earnest about their coverage. They made it OK to like a lot of this admittedly ridiculous stuff that was coming out, and they defended the hell out of the music and artists that were actually worth something. I bet if I opened that box and leafed through many of those issues now, I’d find rudimentary layouts, clichéd writing, embarrassing ads, and lots of typos. I bet there’s a lot of stuff I’d see now that I didn’t know to look for then.
I bet if I kept that box opened long enough, I wouldn’t be able to close it back up.
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Delaware native and Sports Illustrated staffer Gary Smith, widely hailed as one of the best magazine writers crafting copy today, had a piece in last week’s issue on Andre Agassi. You’ll have to buy the ish to read the whole thing, but I’m sure it’s worth it. Smith’s context game is ridiculous – why don’t people write this way about music?
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If you picked up a copy of The New York Times and had the option of reading a story on the current Israel/Hezbollah conflict or a story on the electronic rock band TV On The Radio, which would you choose?
Clearly, one story is more important than the other; alternately, one story is much more hopeful than the other. But here’s another factor to consider: which story will be relevant in a few months? What will you care about more? Could it actually be that a story on a Brooklyn art-freak group will have more staying power than coverage of what is arguably the most politically volatile situation, um, ever? Does anyone bring up Jerry Brown on a regular basis?
This is why I pay more attention to music than anything else. Not the other way around.
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I remember when this came out, but I fronted hard. Even the great singles didn’t move me, though I blame radio’s crap sound for that. Urban Legend lacks the arrival of King but song-for-song is every bit as good. I had it in my CD changer and accidentally put it on, then couldn’t take it off. Tip flows beautifully over sharp, funky tracks like a more accessible DJ Quik. Come to think of it, what’s stopping these two from doing a song, or, um, an album, together?
“Fresh” is a gem found on DJ Drama’s The Leak that didn’t make it onto King. So good I might include it on my year-end mix ahead of “I’m Talkin’ to You” or “King Back.” Maybe.
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Interviewed Clipse for Prefix; results here. Ended up on their tour bus on the way to Power 99, where they met up with Sandman and Liva for an on-air freestyle. These guys are so good it’s not even fair.
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The New Yorker steps its NYC hip-hop radio coverage up this week with Ben McGrath’s look at incidents that have taken place in or at Hot 97. Included is this quote from sub-par rapper Gravy, who may or may not have been shot in front of the station:
“You know you hit, so your mind frame is—you pumped, your adrenaline is going. I reach my hand over, and I see I’m bleeding. I didn’t see the hole. I can’t see behind my ass.”
Between this and Sasha Frere-Jones’ Radiohead conversion, The New Yorker is actually paying attention to pop music. Expect a Malcolm Gladwell profile on Saigon by September.
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I’ve only given it one spin-thru, but 7L & Esoteric’s A New Dope is the most exciting record of the year, fresh and unexpectedly gorgeous the way Dr. Octagonecologyst and Madvillainy were.
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Joey Buddens mixtape released in January. Probably better than his album that may never come out. Dude’s hard to pin down artistically, as this interview makes clear. See, he’s on Def Jam, not the place to be if you’re, um, artistic. Unless you’re The Roots.
Nod to DatPiff for the supply.
