December 16-22, 2004

music

Pop Gun

Anti-Pop Hero: "I don't think what I do is so outside the realm of rap," says Beans. "It's just my extension of hip-hop as I know it."

Can Nelly fans warm up to indie hip-hop's maverick iceman?

by A.D. Amorosi

Beans is the coldest motherfucker in hip-hop. From his icy music to his glacial flow, the bloodiest, cruelest, harshest gangsta rap can't compare to the cold brutality Beans lays forth on CDs like Tomorrow Right Now and the brand new Shock City Maverick (Warp).

Beans' steely beat box rhythms and sampled po-mo screeches create a menacing form of wobbly futurist funk, a lean, stark and leery electro vibe. Add to that his sardonic, free-jazzed verses and the picture grows darker and blurrier. It makes sense that he once dubbed himself "the Ornette Coleman of this rap shit." Lyrical stories of substance abuse and empty neighborhoods paint bleak portraits, sure. But the manner in which he jumbles his phrases in collages confounds even tender moments like "Merle," a love letter to his mother.

Spit with righteous but eerily calm indignation, his crushing words stare blankly into the abyss of urban existence and the desperate characters within it. These make for the sort of short, wired stories even Raymond Carver and William Gibson could envy.

Beans would welcome a place alongside Nelly and Chingy. "I think given the chance, the usual hip-hop audiences might like my stuff," he says between bites at a diner in his Brooklyn neighborhood.

You can tell he doesn't believe it.

"I don't think what I do is so outside the realm of rap," he says. "It's just my extension of hip-hop as I know it." Perhaps beyond the chill, Beans is looking for a great thaw, something that could bring him closer to hip-hop at large.

Beans, 33, still speaks sadly about the demise of Anti-Pop Consortium, the legendary IDM hip-hop trio he co-fronted to critical, if not mainstream, success. MCs Beans, Priest and M. Sayyid split in 2002. "Our death was premature," says Beans. "Anti-Pop didn't have to stop. But they hated me."

After Anti-Pop, Beans—signed at the time to the Warp label as a solo artist—unleashed his barren aesthetic with Tomorrow Right Now. Released just months after Anti-Pop's breakup, Tomorrow has the feel of a hastened exit, a burnt-rubber rush. "That urgency?" he says, snickering. "I didn't want people to forget me."

The community most accepting of Beans was one more familiar with avant-electronica than pop/hip-hop. He found himself playing with guys like Matthew Shipp and Prefuse 73. Touring with Outhud and Tortoise seemed to seal that fate.

Watching Beans open for Tortoise was like watching Cleavon Little stroll into Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles. Nerdy Caucasians took a step back, shocked by the effortless force of Beans' stoic robotics, his rambling isolationism.

Beans would love to play for hip-hop audiences. But he's not holding his breath. "Hip-hop is a pretty conservative place. There are certain things—beats, ideas—that that audience is used to hearing. I don't have that approach."

His verses are longer. His free-associative topicality is self-referential and introspective. His choruses are busy when they should rest and calm when they ought to get busy. "I know my music is selfish."

Still, he does seem more open to conventionality these days. Beans' new Shock City Maverick seems less abstract and more open to sexual braggadocio and boastful finger-pointing, the twin towers of hip-hop subject matter.

"I wanted to make the response more immediate, something where the tempo of the music could match the tenor of the lyrics," says Beans of Shock.

Backed by digital mutant-soul sheets of crunked synth and belching bass, he takes on bitter rap rivalries on "Shards of Glass" ("MCs don't like my style /'cause they can't do no better"). He laughs at groupies who crave attention on "I'll Melt You" ("Greedy with girls/ Half-naked in a tickle-fight/Stroking my ego like a hand job"). He seems to take some shots at hip-hop audiences on "Death by Sophistication" and "Down by Law," songs where waving hands in the air becomes a capital offense.

Contrary to that opinion, he claims he was looking to issue "an homage" to hip-hop.

Like its cover image—Beans with a massive shiny beat box in his hand, cap tilted sideways—Shock is as much a loving nod to the music he grew up with as it is an abstraction of such. "It's about being in love with Crush Crew and Grandmaster Flash, with hearing them on the radio and in the streets when I was a kid. This is my tradition. But I want to groove and be experimental. That's my nostalgia."

Beans performs Fri., Dec. 17, 9 p.m., $8, with Spank Rock and Alphabet Army, The Five Spot, 5 S. Bank St., 215-574-0070.