Hip-hop artist, producer, and one-man musical Swiss army knife Kokayi sat down with TMS to talk about his 2010 record Robots and Dinosaurs, and to share his thoughts on hip-hop and the music business in the 21st century. His latest record, 8Bit ubermentals, covers almost a decade of electronic and instrumental hip-hop produced on his venerable Roland W-30. It’s free and well worth your time, as is the latest free remix EP R3TS&DNSR5 RE1MAG1NED.
TMS: The first thing I wanted to ask you about was the title of the album – Robots and Dinosaurs. Can you talk about where that title comes from, and did you set out to make the album with that theme in mind?
Kokayi: I asked my son what he wanted for Christmas last year, and he said, “Hey dad, I want robots and dinosaurs.” And I was like, oh, ok, because he was five at the time. And I went to work on some music, and it hit me – I was like, wow, robots and dinosaurs. You’re either a robot or a dinosaur. I was listening to a song I was working on, and the longer I sat there and thought about what he said, the longer it all started to play into it.
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There’s almost too much record here to talk about. Too much record to fit tidily into one genre – it’s a heady blend of rock and hip-hop, with notes of soul and a refreshing pop finish. But it’s absolutely a record: at 13 solid tracks (plus a remix), it feels longer than most albums, and more richly textured. And it’s all great: Kokayi’s sound is classic and earnest, and his voice is distinctive. If there’s anything to complain about in the record, it’s that it aims for (and hits) so much that it defies easy description.
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Even the first time you hear Digitalism’s “BLITZ”, its first 30 seconds, swaddled in the fuzz of a poorly-tuned radio, will give you the unmistakable sense of an impending jam. When it kicks off it really kicks off, with infectious, layered loops that almost immediately start stuttering and playing off one another. Then, just when you’ve had enough, a new movement starts, and the whole party is kicked off another notch. The entire track teases you with the prospect that more is just around the corner, each time delaying for a few flirtatious moments the next layer of infectious dance beats. That’s probably a fitting effect for a teaser single like this to have, whetting our appetite for next year’s LP. I’ll be waiting for that; this track’s sound never quite breaks free of the mechanical (unlike the other track on the EP, “Stratosphere,” which comes a little closer to justifying comparisons to Daft Punk), it hints at something even bigger around the corner.
Blitz is out tomorrow (Nov. 9th) on Kitsune.
I’ll never forget my first Electric Six concert, the night Larry King died. After two forgettable opening acts, Dick Valentine emerged in a cape and announced that the talk show host (still certainly alive today) was dead. With no cell reception in the sweaty basement venue, Larry King was dead for the next two hours.
That’s Valentine’s twisted talent: the ability to fabricate an absurd, sometimes distasteful pocket of ad-hoc reality – for a concert, or just a song – that is completely compelling even as it is absolutely ridiculous. It’s the animating spirit that made Fire the blinding, effortless rock success it remains, a spirit and skill still in evidence in Zodiac. It’s not always enough, but like much of their recent work, it improves on multiple listens.
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Even die-hard Röyksopp fans can be forgiven for some ambivalence: the pleasure of last year’s Junior still might not be enough to erase the dissonant memory of The Understanding, whose solid individual tracks and ready-made dance hits never really cohered into a record – the work of a group that, competent on several registers, couldn’t pick one. Those warring personalities now each have a home: last year’s pulsing, excited Junior is now followed – complemented – by Senior, a more mellow and more soaring take on the same themes. It’s a resounding success.
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You can say something for Chromeo’s latest album that it’s hard to say of most records: the cover art does a fantastic job of communicating what’s inside. Their second album, 2007’s Fancy Footwork, showed Montreal electrofunkers Dave 1 and P-Thugg playing synthesizers mounted on bare womens’ legs. While the duo still grace the cover of Business Casual (out last month), the sexy lady has acquired both stockings and a body – even if she still lacks a face. That’s Business Casual in a nutshell – the same funky beats and self-absorbed melodramatic male characters, but with a new layer of… it’s not quite sophistication, but perhaps “maturity” will do.
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