Shape of Broad Minds - "Craft of the Lost Art"

Shape of Broad Minds - Changes (Lex 2007)
(mp3 taken down by request, but they gave an option of this 20-minute mp3 featuring samples of the album mixed by DJ Jamad from Atlanta)

Shape of Broad Minds – Craft of the Lost Art / Lex

A little less than a month ago, I nearly proclaimed Shape of Broad Minds’ Craft of the Lost Art the hip-hop album of the year. Being as I actually just heard their debut full-length for the first time a few days ago, my hyperbolic statement may have been slightly premature, but if you had a chance to cop the teasing Blue Experience EP, I sincerely doubt you would be able to contain your excitement either. I am just a sucker for innovative rap music, and Jneiro Jarel and company bring the creativity, and in the process deftly establishing himself as an up-and-coming force in the underground hip-hop game by very much carrying the torch lit by the late James Yancey. 2006’s Beat Journey under the Dr. Who Dat? guise entrenched Jarel as a master beatsmith, teasing, twisting and twirling worldly samples through wormholes of synthesizer swirls and stuttering boom-bap foundations. Craft of the Lost Art, as well as furthering his development as a sought after producer, introduces us to the verbal and lyrical side of Jarel’s talents, an aspect not quite as individual, but definitely worth merits. At twenty-three tracks and an hour-plus collection of musical exploration, Craft will definitely be making it’s case come December to sit atop my ‘Year’s Best Rap’ list, and may even be pushing the ‘Best of 2007’ as well.

I may be getting ahead of myself though, so just in case you are not yet familiar with the Shape of Broad Minds pseudo-super group, let me introduce them. The official members of the group are Jarel, Jawwaad, Rocque Won, Panama Black and Dr. Who Dat? Four of these five members are the multiple personalities of Jarel, each distinctive to the city they were conjured up in during his traveled upbringing as the son of a U.S. Army mother. According to the press release, Jawwaad is the Houston-raised multi-instrumentalist (keyboards, trumpet), Rocque Won is a west coast psychedelic singer inspired by Hendrix and Prince, and finally, Philadelphian Dr. Who Dat? is known as an introvert, record collector and studio wizard. Panama Black is (at least to the best of my knowledge) a real living, breathing person, a rapper from Atlanta, GA to be precise. Together they form the Shape of Broad Minds, primped and poised to inspire pseudo-genres like psych-hop or rapadelia.

Sitting comfortably on the one-time WARP offshoot Lex Records, alongside the equally prolific Danger Mouse, Jarel and company’s sound crosses the path of a number of different artists, all very much respected for their own creativity. The music of Craft is a saturated, deeply thudding combination of Outkast, Slum Village, the Soulquarians, Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Madvillain and Gorillaz, of which they share Albarn’s penchant for cinematically quirky compositions. From a musical standpoint, Jarel is definitely building off the sound he established as Dr. Who Dat?, synth-heavy, cleverly syncopated and continuously morphing with amoeba-like compositional structures. Yancey’s instrumental work as J Dilla is definitely a reference point, as is Madlib, especially in his Beat Konducta or Madvillain monikers. It also is very reminiscent of Sa-Ra’s space-stoned remix work and even Outkast’s more tripped-out numbers. Verbally and lyrically, Jarel’s best attribute is his ability to never flat-line in one particular flow. He as easily lays back into free-flowing, smooth-voiced delivery as he can up the ante and spit with speed, running circles around the beats with his delivery. What the EP didn’t reveal was his fondness of abstract interludes, from jazzy scatting to schizophrenic pan-heavy half-phrasing that maybe slightly too akin to the Quasimoto technique. Panama Black, on the other hand, is a straight-up rapper with a flow similar to one of the Clipse twins but without the snarl. When they team their vocal prowess, the album really shines.

There are also a number of guest artists along for this psychedelic boom-bapping trip. As you heard from the Blue Experience EP, MF Doom kills an all too brief verse on the wonderfully urgent “Let’s Go.” Stacy Epps, of Sol Uprising and who you may remember from the standout Madvillainy interlude “Eye” or Oh No’s The Disrupt, also completely demolishes a verse upset-Lauryn Hill-style during one of the album’s best moments, “They Don’t Know.” Her Sol Uprising partner, Lil’ Sci, is also granted a guest spot during the drama-filled “So Much (Chaos),” which stutters superbly over an instrumental that Madlib really should have made; and the always dependable Count Bass D flows effortlessly on the briefly laid-back “It Lives On.” Of the non-guest spots, “Changes” maybe the go-to track, with it’s deeply saturated, heavily modulated melodic beat, of which Jarel verbally glides swiftly over and Black keeps grounded. “Opr8r” shows the more spacey soul side of the group sounding like a collaboration between Andre 3000 and Clipse remixed by Sa-Ra, and the finger-snapped bump of “Stiff Robots & Drunken Horses” comes off like an El-P and MF Doom (though he’d have to inhale a balloon full of helium) pairing.

So, the question I keep asking myself is: “can Craft of the Lost Art be the best rap album of 2007?” Absolutely, but it is still August, so let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. It is an incredibly solid and interesting record that though clocking in at over an hour, never seems like it’s dragging on thanks to the myriad of styles Jarel explores throughout. He is a free spirit experimenting with his tools at hand, and the album very much excels because of it. Craft very much should establish Jarel as an act to watch, and my guess is that future collaborations are imminent. In fact, there already are rumors of Jarel, ahem Roque Won, teaming with Khujo of Goodie Mob for a pairing that can only lead to good rap music. But until his next endeavor, Craft of the Lost Art is plenty of music to keep your head-boppin’ and your mind swirling, so do your ears a favor and introduce them to some psych-hop care of a few Broad Minds.