Oh, and yeah, that happened. Kanye West and Beyoncé played Connect Four.

Anyway, this one’s way hotter than the way-bleeped “preview” version of I’m So Appalled that Hot 97’s DJ Camillo dropped earlier today, but word is that the album version features Pusha T of Clipse and RZA. So there’s still hope for that one, and there never wasn’t for Kanye’s forthcoming fifth album.

Oh, and in case you didn’t catch it, you might recognize some of these rhymes from Ye’s tabletop a capellas over at Facebook HQ last month.

On paper, it can’t fail. The Black Keys consistently deliver the sort of songs that freeze time and frame it. Take any sentimental moment from your life, set it to a Black Keys song, and you can take it to Sundance. Put that kind of songwriting behind Q-Tip, Mos Def, RZA, Raekwon and Jim Jones, and you should at least get one of the most creative rap albums to come along in awhile… If not one of the most creative in any genre.

Sounds like we’re setting you up for a big “However…” doesn’t it? Well… It’s not a bad album at all. It’s just not quite the instant classic it “should” have been. The best track is the one that we posted three months back, Ain’t Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo), featuring Mos Def and Jim Jones. It’s an effective- nearly perfect- blend of the two dimensions of cool at play, and the first tease encouraged the expectations our imaginations were dreaming up, perhaps more than it should have.

Opening track Coochie, featuring Ludacris and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, sounds more like a Ludacris track produced by The Black Keys than two creative hemispheres coming together to form a whole. Patrick Carney plays a two-note beat while Dan Auerbach plays a simple lead riff like it’s a loop in a sampler plugged into his pedalboard. Ludacris has his moments, but the track doesn’t come close to living up to its potential.

The same complaint could possibly be filed for Stay Off The Fuckin’ Flowers featuring Raekwon, as well as for Telling Me Things featuring RZA, though the white guys step it up a notch more in both of those cases, and they’re that much more balanced. Not that we’re playing favorites, or can’t handle too much of either side, it’s just that the midpoint between the two is a great place to be.

On the upside, while nothing trumps Ain’t Nothing Like You, several cuts do come close. Dollaz & Sense featuring verses by Pharoahe Monch & RZA and a chorus by Auerbach, comes off as a cohesive work of collaboration between talents, for example.

Rapper NOE is a surprise MVP, a (genetically healthy) cross between Jay-Z and The Game. NOE carries two outstanding tracks, album closer Done Did It (with Wray), and Hard Times:

Missy Eliot protégé Nicole Wray contributes R&B vocals to several tracks, adding a layer of depth that at worst is a welcome contrast, and at best recalls early Massive Attack, such as on Why Can’t I Forget Him, which she handles unassisted.

Hope You’re Happy is a more crowded elevator. Nicole and Q-Tip lead, doing the Michael Jackson / Paul McCartney singing squabble. Her refrains have heart, while his delivery compliments the climbing blues scale well. And then Billy Danze of M.O.P. comes in… and it’s kinda like if Sticky Fingaz jumped in with a verse on The Girl Is Mine. There’s a time and a place that calls for that kind of in-your-face delivery, but it just doesn’t really work here.

The bottom line is that unfortunately, Blakroc is a bit of a disappointment. But that’s not a very harsh criticism when nothing short of a classic was expected. If it’s only the sum of such high-grade parts, it will still manage to go down as a collectable commodity, and a handy source of eyebrow-raising mixtape fodder.

We got our hands on a cut today via New York Magazine, featuring Mos Def and Jim Jones:

They identified the track as Hoochie Choo, which we’re assuming is the first track of the forthcoming album, the following tracklist for which was published by NME:

1. Coochie
2. On The Vista
3. Hard Times
4. Dollaz & Sense
5. Why Can’t I Forget Him
6. Stay Off The Fuckin’ Flowers
7. Ain’t Nothing Like You
8. Hope You’re Happy
9. Tellin’ Me Things
10. What You Do To Me
11. Done Did It

The Blakroc album is reportedly slated for a late November release.

P.S. There’s more info and some videos up at Blakroc.com. Thanks to trucks for the heads up!

Where else are you going to find Mystik Journeymen, Tech N9ne, La Coka Nostra and Raekwon all in one spot? Add some heavyweight clout including Busta Rhymes, Nas and Ice Cube, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a way to spend a summer day in (far) East L.A.

Check out Antiquiet’s video recap of Rock The Bells 2009, including my exclusive interview with Luckyiam of Mystik Journeymen / Living Legends as two drunk homegirls make out in the background:

Eyedea (aka Mike Larsen) of Eyedea & Abilities had some transportation issues but conquered the Paid Dues side stage as victorious underdogs of the day. After all, a white duo with a vocalist who looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo on top of their rock leanings (one of Larsen’s many side projects is an indie rock band).

The duo tore through an inspiringly original set consisting largely of material from their latest release, the aptly-named By The Throat. The crowd seemed to react most excitedly during their breathless Spin Cycle jam, in which Larsen frantically spit the verses before transitioning to a proper rock-style chorus.

As The Roots enjoyed some time away from Jimmy Fallon with a beat-tastic set, New York legends M.O.P. performed their classics, from Cold As Ice to Ante Up, as well as some new tracks from their upcoming comeback album, The Foundation.

Raekwon, looking like he’d just been in a fight, ran through several signature Wu classics to the screaming delight of everyone within earshot of the Paid Dues stage. Raekwon’s set was a fiery fiasco with fans rhyming along to his every word, hungry for the Wu shit any way they can get it.

Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek tore the shit out of the main stage as Reflection Eternal, despite being dwarfed by the giant ampitheater surroundings in broad daylight. Kweli always brings the inimitable flow, and his spitfire delivery was as transcendent as ever in the San Bernardino heat.

Once the sun dropped behind the horizon, Busta Rhymes descended from his gigantic Flipmode tour bus to warm up the stage for the final acts. What he did instead was blow the preceding names off the stage and raise the bar to near-impossible heights for every performer to come after; the man was utterly on fire, spitting fury and interacting with the crowd in good spirits throughout the set.

After a few warmup tracks by Nas, Damian Marley joined him under a waving Jamaican flag for an enticing set of material that pulled from each of their catalogues as well as Damian’s legendary father Bob Marley, while sampling a healthy dose of material from their collaboration album due later this year as well. Their show was a definite highlight of the event, a uniquely high-caliber collaboration that’s bound to crush on record.

Naturally, wherever Slaughterhouse goes, drama follows. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to sandwich the beef-happy Slaughterhouse between sets by Wu-Tang cornerstones Raekwon and RZA? That person should certainly be unemployed now, for having helped create a violent damper that sent this year’s Rock The Bells festival off on a bad note: Joe Budden of Slaughterhouse was sucker punched backstage by someone in Wu-Tang member Raekwon’s entourage prior to their set.

Nevertheless, Slaughterhouse took the stage to thunderous crowd enthusiasm that far exceeded their love for any Wu members that played. Their set was cut to three songs (no, really) due to curfew, but it was their own damn fault – a half hour after missing their scheduled cue time, Raekwon’s Wu-mate RZA took the stage and started his show early. He was supposed to have closed the second stage, which may have had something to do with the issue (that, and Budden’s punch to the face).

RZA unleashed a sizzling set, splashing Grey Goose every which way and unveiling the firstborn son of the late ODB in the process with an unbearably bad song called I Want A Million Dollars.

Headliner Ice Cube sent the night out with a manic blast, recruiting his former Westside Connection partner WC to help him run through a hit-brimming set that included Natural Born Killaz, Bow Down, Straight Outta Compton and Pay Ya Dues, a fitting tribute to the second stage. A wildly diverse lineup (though no female MCs… what’s up with that, RTB?) and a whole lot of behind-the-scenes drama made for a hell of an entertaining Rock The Bells 2009.

Don’t miss it next year.

The forthcoming Chamber Music compilation, due June 30 from E1 Music/Universal, is being hailed as “a welcome flashback to the era when it felt like a new Wu-affiliated album came out every week.” It’s being packaged and promoted as a callback to the old styles, the original grit. How you can do that without the complete involvement of all players involved, much less with ODB six feet under, is beyond me – but I’m not the one writing the checks.

Chief orchestrator RZA put his own spin on it: “This album has a very live element of today’s musicians playing the vibe of Wu-Tang. The vibe we would normally sample, the vibe of things that we would accumulate through old soul songs, jazz songs, kung fu movies, whatever, now you’ve got musicians that can play this vibe with Wu-Tang MCs rapping over it. The goal of this album is definitely paying homage to our early sound.”

A total of six Wu-Tang members make their presence known at least once on the album, but mostly in small doses. How can Chamber Music be called a proper Wu album without GZA on wax? And where’s Meth? I’m unsure, but in his place are an assortment of other rap veterans from the New York scene, including Masta Ace, Sean Price, Cormega, M.O.P. and even Kool G Rap.

Ghostface Killah appears on two tracks, only one of which is noteworthy (the excellent Harbor Masters), while Raekwon destroys the mic on “Ill Figures” – but gets his ass handed to him by Cormega and Price on the standout track Radiant Jewels (just wait for the line “Fuck a flow, this is the lyrical aquaduct”). Despite the track’s quality, the rhyming is so uneven that one wonders why they chose to release it in the first place. If anything, it detracts from the Wu legacy… but that’s pretty much the problem with the entire album.

Inspectah Deck, meanwhile, makes a strong showing on Sound The Horns, another album standout right from the gate, with heavy debt to Sadat X and U-God.

Aside from the liberal use of the Wu name, the biggest beef to be found with the album is that, all filler aside, the album’s only eight actual songs – the rest are samplicious segues and random nonsense that don’t do much to supplement the tracks with actual meat. Enlightened Statues is an exception, a stony step into philosophical self-preservation conversation, but once the rainsticks subside RZA owns the final track, NYC Crack. Unfortunately, it sounds about as fitting for a Wu-Tang album as a Jay-Z track. It’s an uneven fit, an end-tacking move that RZA seemed to want for his own promotional devices.

The album is solid, albeit short, and the live-band sound is a refreshing sidestep – but the fact that Chamber Music is being promoted as a Wu-Tang album is downright misleading. It’s essentially a re-run of the piggybacking Wu-Tang Killah Bees album they put out in the early ’90s, relying on the Wu-Tang name and peppering a project with flavor from a sampling of the Clan.

The concept for the project was first conceived at a packed party in São Paulo, Brazil, where the two hit it off and began spinning ideas together that eventually developed into fantasy collaborations between musicians that, at a glance, would seem totally incompatible. But once you hear it, there’s no mistaking The Spirit Of Apollo for a half-assed patchwork album of guest appearances; this record is a brilliant tapestry of strong, diverse flavors that hits a harmonic pitch unlike anything before it.

While the tracks for The Spirit Of Apollo didn’t begin as pieces intentionally designed for a particular artist, Spiegel and Gonzales didn’t shy away from the songs’ individual gravitations. If it was beginning to sound like a George Clinton piece, the duo fully embraced that- but also looked for the keyhole opening for a collaborative twist, in which they’d dream up the most unlikely pairings of musicians.

“We would start to feel the song out, and feel the artist through the song as we did it,” Spiegel said in a recent interview. “Basically, we’d sit around as we were making these tracks and say the nuttiest combination of names, like our dream of who we could get on the song. It’s crazy, a lot of times they actually happened.” 
 
After putting the core beats together on their own, the two enlisted the help of pretty much everyone in the music industry to get their dream project off the ground. It took five years of bartering, begging, haggling and sleight of hand to put all the many pieces together, but in the end N.A.S.A. had compiled a jaw-dropping collection of tracks from a veritable who’s who of the cream of today’s musical crop. Once complete, the duo found a launch pad for The Spirit Of Apollo at the visionary label Anti Records, home to Antiquiet favorites One Day As A Lion, William Elliott Whitmore and Tom Waits (the latter of which makes a guest-vocals appearance).

On paper, there’s no way in hell a reggaeton groove with David Byrne and Chuck D can work, much less kick ass- but in execution (on the excellent Money), it’s the celebration of a bizarre flavor mix that by all accounts should never have been considered, much less pursued. The same goes for Strange Enough, featuring a posthumous appearance by Ol’ Dirty Bastard, verses by (the underrated) Fatlip and an irresistible chorus by the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s resident weirdo/vocalist Karen O:

Kanye grabs hold of the spotlight with both hands on Gifted, rockin’ the laser beams but leaving the Autotune at home for a quick-drop ego-stroke verse that actually kicks ass. Santogold rolls out a decent second verse, while Lykke Li steps up and delivers a chorus that’s a great deal less annoying than the majority of her solo work. 

Check out a making-of clip from the album sessions:

While most of the collaborations hit like butter, a few seem, in hindsight, to be no-brainer team-ups- like George Clinton and Chali 2na on the big-organ, big-chorus singalong There’s A Party. It’s always good to hear from Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, who teams up with DJ Qbert for Soul Samba, a synth-slap groove jam that’s possibly the smoothest track on the record. Much to my dismay, however, the fiercest track on the record is The Mayor, featuring The Cool Kids, Ghostface Killah, Scarface & amp; DJ AM. The energy’s high, the beat’s sick and the flow’s on ten as each artist brings their A game to the most hip-hop song on the album.

For all its vast diversity, The Spirit Of Apollo is a surprisingly cohesive work, due largely to the beat core, and a truly inspired one at that. Nothing seems rushed, impulsive or, worst of all, claustrophobic- a gargantuan feat, given the range of performers and personality on the album. It’s a collaborative masterpiece, and anyone with a working set of ears and even a passive appreciation for a hot party jam is all the better for it.

The aim is to turn the N.A.S.A. live show into a high-octane multimedia extravaganza, with the help of their friends in the heart of the art world. Some have already lent their visual talents, and animated music videos for several of The Spirit Of Apollo’s tracks with original artwork from Shepard Fairey, Sage Vaughn, Mark Gonzalez, Barry McGee, The Date Farmers, Splunny, Marcel Dzama and others. The artists were paired with directors and animators who brought their images to life on the screen. A full-length documentary was recently completed that including interviews with many of the artists who contributed to The Spirit Of Apollo, as well as behind-the-scenes footage from the studio sessions.

The Spirit Of Apollo
February 17, 2009
Anti Records

1. Intro
2. The People Tree (w/ David Byrne, Chali 2na, Gift Of Gab & Z-Trip)
3. Money (w/ David Byrne, Chuck D, Ras Congo, Seu Jorge & Z-Trip)
4. N.A.S.A. Music (w/ Method Man, E-40, & DJ Swamp)
5. Way Down (w/ RZA, Barbie Hatch & John Frusciante)
6. Hip Hop (w/ KRS-One, Fatlip, & Slim Kid Tré)
7. Four Rooms, Earth View
8. Strange Enough (w/ Karen O, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, & Fatlip)
9. Spacious Thoughts (w/ Tom Waits & Kool Keith)
10. Gifted (w/ Kanye West, Santogold & Lykke Li)
11. A Volta (w/ Sizzla, Amanda Blank & Lovefoxxx)
12. There’s A Party (w/ George Clinton & Chali 2na)
13. Whachadoin? (w/ Spank Rock, M.I.A., Santogold & Nick Zinner)
14. O Pato (w/ Kool Kojak & DJ Babão)
15. Samba Soul (w/ Del Tha Funkee Homosapien & DJ Qbert)
16. The Mayor (feat. The Cool Kids, Ghostface Killah, Scarface & DJ AM)
17. N.A.S.A. Anthem