The 'Days Between Stations' columns, Interview magazine 1992-2008: Rap With a Twist
The 'Days Between Stations' columns, Interview magazine 1992-2008: Rap With a Twist
May 2001
"We're going to have a little Q & A," Christopher Walken says, "and at the risk of sounding redundant, please make your answers genuine." It's that scene in True Romance (1993) when gangster Walken is just about to start torturing decent Dennis Hopper, as well as the opening sample on the Unknown Prophets' World Premier (Unknown Prophets), followed quickly by the clumsy "Ready," more or less Hey-hey-we'rethe-Prophets. That's it for bragging, preening and tough-guy posing from this Twin Cities hip-hop trio. "And now, for our feature presentation," says a TV voice as "Ready" fades, and the real action begins: a sing-songy violin sample that seems to put an edge of fantasy, of uncertainty, into every rhyme.
Similar pieces of what seem like slices of old Longines Symphonette "semi-classical" LPs heart-tugging "Clair de Lune" rip-offs and nightclub waltzes, stopped and repeated until they turn into riffs you can't get out of your head—are all through World Premier, with an austerity, a lack of rush or noise, that's reminiscent of DJ Shadow's unsurpassed Endtroducing (1996). Unknown Prophets—Big Jess, MaD SoN and Willy Lose, all in their twenties—don't have Shadow's heroic elegance. What they share with him is a trust in their samples—a trust that simple patterns can bear any weight you place on them. What degraded Central European piece of junk will sound perfect next?
"Never underestimate your opponent," says someone in reedy politician's tones—Ronald Reagan? Richard Nixon?—as "This One" opens. "This one goes out to"—oh, God, not the big audience thank-you routine!—"those who never show no love when they go to shows." There's no speed, no virtuosity; instead there's a conviction on the part of the people you're listening to that they can do what they're not supposed to be able to do. A stirring drama begins to take shape.
You begin to hear the anger of abjection, an embarrassment at one's deepest desires and a determination to overcome it, to stumble toward what you most want to say and then say it, right out in public, even if all you get for it is what the Adverts, making their first single in punk London in 1977, imagined they would get: "We don't like you!" they hear their audience yelling at them. "Go away!" The Adverts found a heroic sound for their nightmare—just as Counting Crows put the losers' tale "Mr. Jones" to a rhythm you couldn't escape, as the Ass Ponys' thrilling "Kung Fu Reference" from their new Lohio (Checkered Past Records) turns out to be about someone who never does anything but watch TV. On World Premier you hear a man throwing away a complaint in the middle of "Take It There": "I gotta act a certain way 'cause of my race?" A thousand tattoos won't cover up the Unknown Prophets' white skin.
So "The Robbery"—cool bank heist, MaD SoN telling the story in the first person, the piece working like a cheap action movie—begins to raise doubts about itself long before Minnesota accents flatten the hip-hop cadences, before you hear the alarm clock you forgot opened the number close it: "Shit! I was fuckin' dreaming?"
"I gave you love / But you treated me like shit, treated me like scum, fucking kicked me when I was down," says a beaten, not young movie voice—that, here, is where self-creation starts. A small gesture can carry more weight than a big one offered by somebody else; uncool songs about how "kids are our future" or a girl who threw it all away generate suspense, which isn't resolved until "Never," the last cut, the testament. The rhymers pledge fidelity to each other, to their art, to the right: "I'll never rhyme about guns, selling drugs or murder / Sooner see a future of flipping burgers." Beat by beat, they get smaller. Then they get bigger: life-size. "I'll never"—be that good, they almost say. You think back over what you've heard, compare it to what's on the radio. "Right," you might say, turning away. But what was that? "I'll never be afraid to show the depth of my emotions"—no style to it, no flair, but a rootedness, like a tree. "There's a side of me that's deeper than the belly of the ocean." And you can realize, now, that for more than an hour that's what you've been listening to; that's what it sounds like.
Originally published in Interview Magazine, May 2001