BUSDRIVER & RADIOINACTIVE
with DAEDELUS
the weather (Mush Records)
Reviewed by Jason Thornberry

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Busdriver's reckless (Temporary Forever had some of the fastest rhymes ever put down, but the thought of the Los Angeles emcee linking up with Radioinactive, those quasi-Anticon colleagues, could make you pause before picking this up. The Anticon label/movement gives suburbia its own rapping folk heroes, and the majority of them rhyme like Richard Pryor's stereotype of a rhythmically challenged Caucasian geek who crosses the street when an actual person of color gets near. Revenge of The Nerds works (obviously) in emo-punk, but never, ever here. If it weren't for former Anticon star Buck 65, who's at least funny, the entire scene would make me feel like I'd spent the day sucking on a nickel.

Sonically the weather was fascinating thanks to producer Daedelus, and his burgling of children's records, jazz breaks, slo-mo funk breaks, outer space sounds, violins, people whistling, and video game noises. Songs like "Sleep Standing Up" were perfect on their own, but Radioinactive just had to fuck everything up with their free-form poetry rants, reading aloud of 'To Do' lists and haphazard rants about nothingatall. Can you make any sense of this?

"Agatha Christie crafty craftmatic grassmagic fertilizing mystery comfort optometrist firefighter, using a pair of wire cutters to fire butlers when they just don't cut it."

Busdriver counters, similarly on-the-spot stoopid:

"I should have won them million doll hairs, but I left my wings in the car. This is the dream of the hand-drum. You will be screened at random. So put up your European hand-gun. Shoot you way out of your fish bowl, okay."

Mush Records is known for many far superior releases, notably and recently Andre Afram Asmar, whose superb Race to The Bottom makes the weather" sound like a demo.

© 2003 - Jason Thornberry