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"Teeth"
The Statler & Waldorf label wanted to kick things off with asampler based around the concept of European electronic musiciansworking with the theme of hip hop. Were this not an already a redundantassignment given the world-wide cribbing of hip hop mannerisms in allforms of electronica, it might seem like an interesting cross-culturalexperiment.Statler & Waldorf
The trouble is that no one on this compilation is astranger to hip hop, as hip hop's place as the world's dominant youthculture paradigm makes a concept like this a laughable afterthoughtunless its executed with brilliance. Unfortunately, it isn't. Mosteverything here is a rehash of the last couple of years of Bip-Hop,~scape, and Force Inc. releases and the already myriad spin-offs andimitators. One track has a little bit of dub, another goes for theminimalist click and drone, another cuts up standard hip hop loops withquirky but highly predictable laptop tomfoolery—it's fairlyworkmanlike. And while not everything on the disc is a waste (in fact,a lot of the tunes are quite well-put-together,) the whole thing feelslike an excursion into the very well traveled. It's like going on anexotic vacation to the mall: you can pretend to be curious andinterested in the cultural zoo, but it's really just a bunch of peoplebuying crap and it's about as lame as imaginable. If nothing else, Teethmakes a good case for these (mostly Scandinavian) artists to break outand do their own thing. This same group of artists working with anassignment like "make electronic music from the theme of Bluegrass"would probably be at least worth checking out just to see the cultureclash. There's a lot to like about Teeth in a superficial"these are nice beats" kind of way, but it has about as deep anunderstanding of hip hop culture as a DJ scratching in a sodacommercial.
The trouble is that no one on this compilation is astranger to hip hop, as hip hop's place as the world's dominant youthculture paradigm makes a concept like this a laughable afterthoughtunless its executed with brilliance. Unfortunately, it isn't. Mosteverything here is a rehash of the last couple of years of Bip-Hop,~scape, and Force Inc. releases and the already myriad spin-offs andimitators. One track has a little bit of dub, another goes for theminimalist click and drone, another cuts up standard hip hop loops withquirky but highly predictable laptop tomfoolery—it's fairlyworkmanlike. And while not everything on the disc is a waste (in fact,a lot of the tunes are quite well-put-together,) the whole thing feelslike an excursion into the very well traveled. It's like going on anexotic vacation to the mall: you can pretend to be curious andinterested in the cultural zoo, but it's really just a bunch of peoplebuying crap and it's about as lame as imaginable. If nothing else, Teethmakes a good case for these (mostly Scandinavian) artists to break outand do their own thing. This same group of artists working with anassignment like "make electronic music from the theme of Bluegrass"would probably be at least worth checking out just to see the cultureclash. There's a lot to like about Teeth in a superficial"these are nice beats" kind of way, but it has about as deep anunderstanding of hip hop culture as a DJ scratching in a sodacommercial. samples:
