Word: lif
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...like their name, pretty redundant. Mission of Burma kicked all of our asses, and were a close fifth on my list of great acts. Danielson was predictably weird.The Futureheads and Spoon were fine, I guess. The Walkmen were totally irrelevant. Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif were in the wrong place at the wrong time, being rappers and all. Liars were noisy and silly. Art Brut were very British. Ted Leo was rather dull, but he did break his skin on a microphone, so I guess that was cool. Destroyer is not an interesting band.And that was that! It was, overall...
...perhaps because only a few of the rappers working at these boundaries of lyrical representation have been able to achieve some modicum of national visibility. Some stars of this subset include much of the roster of Aesop’s home label Definitive Jux (Cannibal Ox, El-P, Mr. Lif), shapeshifting scene veteran Daniel Dumile (MF Doom to most), and Anticon Records’ obscurantist crew (Sole, Dose One, Sage Francis...
While figurative lyrical flourishes were once treated as mere embellishments on relatively representational rhymes with concrete subjects, today’s avant-garde rappers approach abstraction for its own sake. When Mr. Lif and Insight, two Boston rappers still on the fringe of broad recognition, collaborated on the track “Iron Helix” on Lif’s “I, Phantom” concept album, they didn’t trade spars about each other’s virility or compare bling quotients...
Instead, the pair engages in a dialectical debate about the perils of modernity, focused through an eerily post-colonial conversation in which Lif subtly enslaves Insight with the allure of modern techno-commerce. Does pegging them “conscious rappers” do justice to the scope of their creative project, as much an experiment in form as a social critique...
Instead, the pair engages in a dialectical debate about the perils of modernity, focused through an eerily post-colonial conversation in which Lif subtly enslaves Insight with the allure of modern techno-commerce. Does pegging them “conscious rappers” do justice to the scope of their creative project, as much an experiment in form as a social critique...