SHARKEY & C-RAYZ WALZ - Monster Maker - 2007 - Album review

SHARKEY & C-RAYZ WALZ
Monster Maker – 2007– Album review
HIGHLIGHTS:
Pain To The Picture – Jumping Off At The Jump-Off – Electric Avenue – Might She Shoot – This Ol’ Twisted World – My Way
SOUNDBITE:
“Kick me down, I just rebound/ What was hidden before, I see now”
RATING: 5/5
Hot damn this is fresh! The teaming up of Sharkey and C-Rayz Walz may bring to mind projects like MadVillain, DangerDoom and Gnarls Barkley but it has something a little extra and with no disrespect to C-Rayz who has paid his dues for years now, I think that extra can be found in Sharkey. This man has mad skills and I don’t say that lightly. He’s worked previously with Jean Grae, The Pharcyde and Jedi Mind Tricks (among others) and his production is both incredibly varied and heavily layered so that at times adding a rapper of even C-Rayz stature on top is almost gilding the lily. The range of loops and cuts is vast and rich and while it veers towards the synthy and technoid he has a keen ear for the unusual vocal hook while the beats draw from boom-bap to boom-clap, electro and techno. The distorted filters of instrumental opening Birth of Ratto Di Laboratorio rapidly fade into This Ol’ Twisted World a track where the conflict between the sunniness of the swelling synths and soul hook on the one hand and the lyrical content on the other betray this is one from the underground. The heavy threat of My Way’s martial stomp is countered by vocal loops and a welter of effects that almost (but not quite) overwhelm C-Rayz laying down the law but the LP really hits it’s stride with Pain To The Picture. A few seconds filtered widdling gives way to a giant breakbeat and epic synth stabs and which perversely and brilliantly Sharkey combines first with a Latin Booglaoo B-line and then a muted Latin piano while Walz gets quite exercised about something or other “The frame is crooked, the pain in the picture/ framing the scripture, we maintain a grip there.” Then you get another epic roller in the form of Jumping Off At The Jump Off - huge female vocal hook, party rhyme and strings - in all senses of the word. Electric Avenue bleeps and squelches it’s way into that party immediately afterward and makes heavy use of gap-toothed pop-rasta legend Eddy Grant’s track of the same name. More synths have their pitch bent on this than you could shake a pair of silver thigh-high platform boots and sunglasses with star-shaped lenses at. Ladies say ‘Ow’? – they certainly will when this comes on – the dancefloor will be fucking rammed with them. There is a sense that C-Rayz is battling to be heard clearly at times by the density of the music on this and that may be too big an issue for some to deal with although I’d argue that’s more of a stylistic choice than an error in production. Sharkey only really falls down on That Moment near the end of the album with a guest spot from Vast Aire where the best thing he can come up with for the guy to help C-Rayz rhyme over is a pastiche of a Cannibal Ox track for fuck’s sake. Talk about type-casting. Plus there is some old conceptual crap from Sharkey about the world having the potential to make us all into monsters or something – read his myspace if you give a shit – as far as I’m concerned the music speaks for itself. Overall though, this has one foot in the past, one in the future and both mostly on the dancefloor, for Sharkey rarely loses sight (unlike many 'underground' DJ/producers) of the DJ's prime directive - move the crowd. If you reckon there’s been a better hip-hop album out this year for sheer innovativeness, please let me know. If Kanye West had the originality or the bollocks to come up with something like this he would be hailed as the saviour of hip-hop. Discuss.
Out now.
RELATED LINKS
Listen to Sharkey & C-Rayz Walz – Monster Maker
monstermaker - myspace
monstermakermusic.com
SEARCH MONKEYBOXING EMPIRE REVIEWS