RJD2
Thurs May 20
Berbati’s Pan
10 SW 3rd
“It’s not like I didn’t make another Dead Ringer just to be an asshole.” And he didn’t sing to be a dick, neither. RJD2–the Ohio DJ/producer renowned for the graceful, brooding beats and melody from deep crates–is not handcuffed to the forward-thinking-but-formal hiphop that defined his loved first record (Dead Ringer). On Since We Last Spoke, his second album, RJ makes melody pine and blast, taking the tools of hiphop–sampler, MPC, ProTools–to patchwork rock riffs and hooks with a boom-bap underlay, carefully binding samples to sound as though a real live band played them. At 11 songs mostly under the five-minute mark, it’s far from Dead Ringer‘s mountainous and long-building denouement, and more melodic than the straightforward rap projects he produced in the interim (for Aceyalone, tourmate Diverse, and with Blueprint as Soul Position). “At times [with Dead Ringer], I definitely tried to play the formalist game; I wouldn’t take that as an insult. I mean, you have to play by the rules to break the rules in any genre,” he explains. “I didn’t want to be Mister Weirdo Ham Leftfield–I didn’t wanna come out like that. Even if I’m doing the weird shit, it’s not like I’m trying to fly any freak flag; I’m just trying new shit. I know a lot of people will hear this record and they’re not gonna hear the hiphop influence coming through as strong–but I sequenced this entire record on an MPC. Sixty or 70 percent of it is samples.”
Including RJ’s first stab at singing–he says he did it last-minute, when all the “real” vocalists fell through–at times, Since We Last Spoke feels like a precise pop album (one particularly emotive vocal number could be an outtake from Postal Service or Sascha Funke). Blame it a little on OutKast. “I think Andre can sing 5 million times better than me,” effuses RJ, “but in a lot of ways, I think the OutKast record had an effect on me. For one, when he sings on the record–personally, I think he’s a phenomenal singer–and they made this record that’s so far out there, so bizarre, but they made it work.”