“If it rocks well in the car, that’s 90% of my judgement.” So sayeth Grandmaster Flash, the first person ever to record a record scratch. Twenty years have passed since his last LP (1988’s On the Strength), and one would assume that Flash has been paying attention to hip-hop music during that time. In ’88, the top commercial rap albums included It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, Straight Outta Compton, Strictly Business, and Follow the Leader. 2008’s top commercial rap albums? Tha Carter III, Paper Trail, Trilla, American Gangster, and The Recession. Not one to homestead and transition to an ascetic life removed from modernity, Flash has clearly been riding around in cars listening to rap music and still has something to offer rap, 30 years after he became one of the founding fathers of hip-hop.
Many critics are pointing out that this new album from Flash sounds remarkably similar to many of the current styles of hip-hop and doesn’t sound at all like the sampling-cutting-scratching style that Flash purveyed quite impressively in the ’80s. Without fear of waxing nostalgic, these reviewers condemn Flash for trying to sound new and current. They lambaste him for not sticking to his old strengths — but, then again, how do we know that his old strengths are still his strengths? Are we to assume that Flash is deliberately hiding otherworldly superhuman turntable skills? Is it foolish to assume that he could, if he wanted to, create a full album in 2009 that still captured the same spirit as his masterworks of 1982?
It seems like a better story to tell is about the new Flash, the Flash that is producing music in ’09 after having been a central figure in hip-hop for over 30 years. He’s the producer on this album, crafting a sound that has undoubtedly been influenced by the scores of innovations and bad moves made by mainstream hip-hop since he released 1988's On the Strength, his last album with the full lineup of The Furious Five. And he has crafted an album that is solid, feels good, has a few club-bangers with catchy hooks, a helluva pile of crafty beats, and the crème rapper posse to make your head feel funny. Even if there are tinges of contemporary mainstream hip-hop leeching through on select tracks, this album still feels much more like hip-hop’s best moments from days of yore and not like Auto-Tune with cholera.
The point of The Bridge is that Grandmaster Flash has determined he is the international ambassador of hip-hop, and in his quest to create a positive, redeeming message through hip-hop, he brings together new names (Spain’s Kase-O or his son J-FLO) with familiar faces and old legends (Big Daddy Kane, Q-Tip, KRS-One, Grandmaster Caz). “We Speak Hip-Hop,” a KRS-One joint, sorta sums up Flash’s message: hip-hop is a global language. Of course, there are a bevy of tracks with the requisite sexy talk and bragging — nothing new there. But criticizing Flash’s effort because it doesn’t match his work from the ’80s ignores a few key points.
First of all, this is, in fact, his first new album in a long time. If you pop it in and expect it to sound anything like his last album from 20 years ago, you’re ignoring the fact that hip-hop has been constantly evolving. Second, even if an artist seems to have peaked on a previous record, that’s no reason to consider any follow-up a failure. Flash knows this and doesn’t show an interest in just trying to create another 60 minutes of miracle scratch technique and sampling mastery on record. He’s trying to make a new statement. Third, Flash is not interesting in producing inane sexy party jams or outrageous screaming club jams. He is a gentleman, a scholar of hip-hop, and an originator. Lastly, the assembly of rappers on here should delight anyone with an ear for the underground. We are privileged to have such a curious and interesting selection of old and new rappers on one record.
Truly, though, I like to think that The Bridge takes the best of early- to mid-’90s hip-hop from New York, the synthesized sound of the last five to ten years, an interesting blend of MCs, and an ear for a slammin' beat, and puts them together in a package that isn’t necessarily mind-blowing, but that is at least complete, well-intended, and meaningful. In fact, only a few of the tracks fall flat (Snoop’s seeming more like a retired robo-gangster automaton than usual on “Swaggerm,” and “Connection” sounds like a throw-away soundtrack to a bad montage sequence). But really, if you have a top-of-the-line custom car stereo system, the beats on these songs alone are enough to justify playing this album on repeat for a week or more. Perhaps Flash will get more credit for this effort later in the year, after the rest of the rap world has shown what they can do in ’09.
1. Welcome
2. Shine All Day (Feat. Q-Tip, Jumz, & Kel Spencer)
3. We Speak Hip Hop (Feat. KRS-One, Afasi, Kase-O, Maccho, Abass)
4. Here Comes My DJ (Feat. DJ Kool & DJ Demo)
5. Bounce Back (Feat. Busta Rhymes)
6. Swagger (Feat. Red Café, Snoop Dogg & Lynn Carter)
7. What If (Feat. KRS-One)
8. Unanswered (Interlude)
9. Tribute To The Breakdancer (Feat. MC Supernatural)
10. Grown & Sexy (Feat. Mr. Cheeks)
11. When I Get There (feat. Big Daddy Kane & Hedonis Da Amazon)
12. Connection (Interlude)
13. I Got Sumthin’ To Say (Feat. Lordikim, J-Flo & Almighty Thor)
14. Can I Take You Higher (Feat. Mr. Cheeks, Granmaster Caz & Tito)
15. Unpredictable (Feat. Syndee & Big Daddy Kane)
16. Those Chix (Feat. Byata, Princess Superstar & Hedonis Da Amazon)
17. Bronx Bombers (Feat. Lordikim, Almighty Thor & Mann Child)
18. Zuka The Sound (Interlude)
19. Oh Man (Feat. Syndee & Natacha Atlas)
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