Hip-hop's East Coast-West Coast domination may be eroding, but it's still something of a shock to hear the sentences "Idaho-that's where I was born" and "Down for this hip-hop cause" in close proximity on a record. No, this isn't a satirical skit or a Prince Paul album: It's "Dark Sky Demo," a song off The No Music, the new album by Themselves. If you haven't figured it out, Themselves. -producer Jel and rap-per Doseone-along with the other An-ticon artists on their current tour (Alias, Dax Pierson) are some of the most un-likely folks ever to get on the mike. No-body in hip-hop flaunts their inferiority complex like these kids, and if you think that's something of an oxymoron, wel-come to Themselves' alternate universe. As you might expect, the music is a little off-center, too, with Themselves carrying their label's aggressively ex-perimental tradition forward with... well, aplomb probably isn't the right word, but it'll have to do. More than most "regular" hip-hop, the preten-tiously but not inaccurately titled The No Music negates a lot of hip-hop tropes we've come to expect: boasting, clear, simple beats, straight-forwardness.
In a way, it resembles a fifth-generation cassette dub of the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head. It's a mix-tape-as-album that leavens its oddball, buried-in-sound rhymes with whatever spare parts are laying around: found sound-bites, stray static, garage-band instru-ments. Jel, who released the intriguing solo shot 10 Seconds earlier this year on Mush, oversees the whole mess, and his leave-the-ends-dangling style is put to good use here. You could call it junk-yard hip-hop: "Hat in the Wind" couples a doleful, DJ Shadowy slow-mo horn riff with a groove that's more Archers of Loaf than Archie Bell & the Drells, while occasionally scratching in per-cussion from "Apache," the Incredible Bongo Band's B-boy classic. "Only Child Explosion" rocks a lullaby cho-rus of "The more I think / The more I think about suicide." The mainstream might not grieve if such a thing came to pass, but that would be its loss.
[Michaelangelo Matos]