Vikings & Beekeepers

Last week Kanye West released the gajillion selling Graduation, humiliating raps mumbling bad guy, 50 Cent, and establishing himself as raps biggest star and most intriguing personality in the process (that is, until two years from now when some other guy comes along and knocks him off his throne - it happened to Em, it happened to Fiddy and it’ll happen to Ye). The new album is pretty stellar, if only for the fact that there are no skits (I know Ye bitches about Jay-Z on “Big Brother,” but he owes Jay for showing him that skits are an unnecessary feature on rap albums), but it also contains some of Kanye’s most curious sample choices to date.

One track in particular (the not-safe-to-google “Drunk and Hot Girls), features a sample courtesy 70’s Krautrock gods, Can. Genre crossovers are nothing new, it’s been what’s kept music interesting for so long, but I honestly never imagined the day where ultra-commercial hip hop would look towards the weird, rhythmic experimentalism of Krautrock for inspiration. I guess it never crossed my mind that one might compliment the other. It does make some sense however, Krautrock, and especially Can’s version of Krautrock, is so intensely focused on developing a persistent hypnotic groove that a loop of just a couple of bars could establish a foundation for anyone to rap over (or in Kanye’s case, kinda rap over).

The sample in question is “Sing Swan Song” (streaming soon, I hope) from Can’s 1972 masterwork, the tense, groovy and perfect Ege Bamyasi. In the context of a hip hop song, I can actually hear how “Sing Swan Song” would work. There are enough gurgling background noises and momentum building moments to make for a dramatic rap song. The song subtly ebbs and flows, with various instruments bending, tinkling and ringing in the background. It’s also one of Can’s most melodic songs, with singer Damo Suzuki delivering one of his most coherent and lovely performances.

The song opens with the sound of running water, which slowly intensifies until the band organically takes over with a slow, churning rhythm, a darkly intense acoustic shuffle and the occasional cymbal crash. With Irmin Schmidt’s floating keyboard swells, guitarist Michale Karoli’s interspersed electric vibrato and Holger Czukay’s thudding bass, “Sing Swan Song” creates an otherworldly setting. The band is like the Dagobah System (from The Empire Strikes Back, as if you didn’t know), full of strange creatures, mud-caked walls, bublling swamps and backwards talking Frank Oz creations (that would be Damo). To push this metaphor even further: maybe Kanye’s Luke Skywalker, retreating to the Dagobah System to learn the ways of the Jedi. Do or do not, there is no try.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 3:38 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.