A New York City hip hop producer handed The Mirror a copy of his client’s new CD in the lower level of Barone last Thursday, promising it would synch up with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
With thoughts of the next Dark Side of the Moon dancing in our heads, we agreed to write a review about the CD. The hope was to be impressed by the recording, or at least to get some laughs out of a possibly poor attempt. Upon review of the CD, however, even our low expectations weren’t met. There was very little connection between the CD and the film besides a few nominal ties. The rapper’s full name is Gnormen “Insanate” Baites. The pronunciation of this name matches the main character in the film. Additionally, the title of the CD was Hitchcock’s production title for Psycho.
While the CD tells the story of a rapper being released from prison in a simple question and answer format, the film Psycho has a much more theatrical and dramatic progression, with no mention whatsoever of prison release. Whereas Pink Floyd’s album, the only known possible synch-up, actually bears thematic similarities to certain scenes in The Wizard of Oz, this album has none, other than the mention of death in some tracks and the mention of insanity in others.
So, with a hip hop CD in the stereo and a classic DVD in the player, I had to decide which one to turn off. I turned off the CD. It is difficult for me to enjoy a hip hop album, but this CD was simply not up to the task.
Although the original promise of synching fell flat, one hip hop aficionado felt the CD’s content sounded stronger when it stood alone.
“His word play is a mix between old school Biggy [Smalls] and the last albums of Tupac [Shakur], with a West Coast type of feel,” said Tom Boe-Wiegaard ’07.
This means Insanate is trying to become known by going back to the roots of hip hop. While this may be an impressive and righteous goal to aspire to, the press release shines more light into Insanate’s other unmet goals.
“I see myself as hip-hop’s version of Edgar Allen Poe and Nirvana,” Insanate noted in a press release.
Insanate says his lyrics share a beauty and darkness with these two.
“The beats and bass lines are really simple,” Boe-Wiegaard said. “There’s definitely a connection between the way he rhymes and the beat of the song, which shows there is thought behind it.”
But as far as achieving the Edgar Allen Poe goal, Insanate does not have impressive rhyming or the nearly the same depth of emotion in story-telling that Poe has. Throughout the tracks, however, there are variations on the beat and bass lines which shows he is musically flexible, even if his rhyming is not.
Insanate describes one of his reasons behind rapping in one track. He wants to “bring death to every last one of the whack MC’s.”
According to Boe-Wiegaard, though, “True hip-hop, the beauty of it, and the beauty of rhyming comes from a pure passion in what the artist is rhyming about. When the rhymes narrow-mindedly generalize, they miss the point of true hip hop,”
The true point of hip hop is “to convey a thought through the artistic combinations of words,” said Boe-Wiegaard.
Perhaps Insanate’s producer should tell his client to focus on this next time, instead of passing his CD out with false promises.
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