BROOKLYN FUNK ESSENTIALS
Make Them Like It (Shanachie)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

---

About a year and a half back, a CD called In The Buzz Bag arrived at the Cosmik offices and it promptly turned all of us here into Brooklyn Funk Essentials fans. Our love grows deeper with Make Them Like It, another tasty musical stew with ingedients galore, from funk, hip-hop and jazz to Latin, reggae and psychy-trippy music for the mind. The warning label on the cover seems to apply mostly to "Got Cash," an uncatagorizable flow of insults and scathing criticisms that makes Queen's "Death On Two Legs" sound like a love song. That song seques into "I Confirm Reservation," a bit of space and dub-reggae that sounds like Bill Laswell meets Michael Rose. The fact that songs this diverse flow together into one cohesive album is something of a miracle. They don't necessarily re-invent any of the genres they've absorbed, but they sure do have an intoxicating sound. Drink up.

© 2000 - DJ Johnson