COVER STORY .

Free Hand

RJD2


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Published: Mar 7, 2007

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

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"This is the first record I've made under my own name," explains a polite British vocal sample during the intro-lude of RJD2's 2002 cut-paste-and-blast opus Deadringer. "The first one I've made under my own control entirely, without anyone else telling me what to do." The 38-second aside did well in laying the sod for the lauded turntable impresario's debut record, one of the most listenable albums in the hermetically sealed canon of instrumental hip-hop.

But oh, the irony: By using that found cut, RJ (government name Ramble John Krohn) set himself up to be labeled a crazed, crate-digging scientist who was only as good as his latest lifted gem.

Lucky for him, he ain't doing that anymore.

Last September, when RJ announced plans to release a self-penned, self-recorded pop record, we-hate-change underground rap fans begrudgingly updated his Wiki page and braced for the worst.

But The Third Hand doesn't sound like the work of a jaded artiste who foolishly peeled off a perfectly good layer of sonic skin. Rather, it arrives at your door in neatly folded folk packaging, full up with dancing, down-but-not-out chord structures, thoughtful major-key piano tickles and range-y vocals. Risky? Absolutely. But he's given this a lot of thought.

RJ's desire to break out nagged at him during his name-making stint at backpacker super-label Definitive Jux. "I realized that my whole career was reliant on good samples," says the Columbus, Ohio, native, who has lived in West Philly since 2002. "If I didn't find any more, I couldn't make another record. It seemed to me, right then and there, that it was a horrible way to sustain making records."

In the summer of 2005, RJ officially began his move away from hip-hop hunter-gatherdom. The transition was aided by some latent chops: He studied music theory at his vocational high school, and played in several bands as a kid. Most importantly, he dedicated the whole of his time to the transformation. "If you really want to take apart a carburetor and your fucking life depends on it, you'll learn it [quickly]," he says. "If you just work on it on Saturday afternoons, you're not going to learn nearly as fast."

The Third Hand was recorded, mixed and tracked entirely in his basement studio. RJ deliberately evokes the tightly wound rhythms and spacey gradations that branded his residency as a 45 rpm surgeon. "When [a sample] comes off a record, it has almost an artifact quality to it," he says. "I found that it was really hard to make [live music] sound like a sample."

He'll face an even bigger challenge re-creating it all onstage. He kicks off a 24-city tour March 9, and will waltz into the Starlight Ballroom April 11. Audiences should expect a set devoid of smoke and mirrors. While The Third Hand isn't the first record made under RJ's name, it's clearly the product of an inner ear reborn. "I had two [choices]," RJ says. "Either go for something that was abstract, or shoot for something communicative. As vulnerable as it feels, the only decision that made sense was trying to convey something."