by John Bear
Daily Lobo
Hip-hop could attain a higher degree of greatness, if it weren't for MCs.
Not that there is a multitude of talented lyricists ready to grab the microphone and spit beautiful poetry.
But how many times have you heard a great beat ruined by hip-hop clichÇs like just how dope I am or the terrifying magnitude of my crack business or my unmatched sex prowess? It gets a little tiring to hear beautiful music marred by egotistical and, more often than not, highly chauvinistic rantings that come in rhyming couplets. I hear this kind of thing all the time. It causes me endless grief.
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Fortunately, as hip-hop rhyming becomes more uninspired and repetitious, instrumental albums are beginning to show up in increasing numbers.
Now Playing by production powerhouse Ayatollah is a fair enough place to start one's instrumental collection. He has produced for the likes of Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Pharoah Monche and various members of G-Unit. The album is available on Nature Sounds Records which released Omega One's debut The Lo-Fi Chronicles. Omega One is best known for his production work with rapper Aesop Rock.
The liner notes on Now Playing are sparse and don't reveal whether these beats appear on previous albums by the MCs he produces, but some painstaking research on my part revealed these are all new or at least previously unpublished.
And the beats sound pretty good, if not a little standard. Ayatollah still employs the old-school production mode of turntables and a sampler as opposed to doing everything on a computer like his label mate Omega One. Old soul samples abound and funky bass lines are often cut in and out on what sounds like a turntable. Most of the album has that cut-and-chopped-steel-wheel feel to it. That's a good thing. Hip-hop has gotten a tad too computerized, and that sometimes gives a beat a cold, disconnected sound. Nothing provides soul like the touch of the human hand.
Now Playing occasionally ventures into the realm of the hardcore with several tracks devoted to heavy guitar stabs and stomping beats, but the album sticks reasonably close to a soft stepping dynamic. "The Devil is Sweet," the high point of the album, features a beautifully haunting vocal sample over an intermittent bass line, drum breaks and a syncopated version of "The Godfather" melody. It's a banger, no other way to put it.
The only shortcoming about the album is it can get a tad repetitive. Ayatollah is used to making beats to be rhymed over, and the tracks on this album are no exception. If he chooses in the future to make a more instrumentally-oriented album like his counterpart Omega One, he may be on to something great. In the meantime, he is off to a great start.
