Food for Animals - "Belly"

Food for Animals - Shhhy (Hoss 2008)

Food for Animals - Belly / Hoss

Any quick glance over pop culture scribblings by professionals and amateurs alike in the last month keeps coming back to one city: Baltimore. After years in every available shadow cast by the nation's capital, Baltimore has emerged as a sudden cultural icon largely in part to the ongoing plot of two major stories: B-club and "The Wire." At the risk of turning this into a Baltimore-centric blog for a few days, Food for Animals could not be releasing Belly at a better time.

Did you ever see that movie, "Belly"? The one that was basically a two-hour Hype Williams video? The best part of that movie is the opening scene where Nas and DMX ("Bundy, Buns that is, or Tommy for short" has to be one of the most inexplicable intros in movie history) and their posse roll up in this club with their glowing eyes and gun down the guy who runs it. Look here:



The music for this movie was done by Stephen Cullo and this particular scene has Soul II Soul's "Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)." It is easy to imagine that Food for Animals would be the actual soundtrack in this club were it not for the dramatic overdubbing. Vulture V, Hy and Ricky Rabbit have created music that brings the best elements of ghettotech and glitch-hop together under one glorious B-club roof to form a bouncy, yet utterly bleak(-sounding) album that has been delayed far too long. Props to Hoss for actually letting it see the light of day as it long ago should have.

The group initially gives no indication on opener "Maryland Slang" that this is going to be anything beyond a Black Dice noise-fest. And then at one minute there is a sudden change, a shift from static to sample and suddenly a submerged verse slips in. It is this abrupt dichotomy that marks what is to come.

"Tween My Lips" and "Bulk Gummies" are both excellent examples of Food for Animals at their disorienting best: Twisted beats cut up and fried under a healthy dollop of industrial atonality, Vulture V and Hy exchange vitriol and beatsmith Ricky Rabbit works his magic for a sonically dense but irresistible two-fer.

Only one track of the 15 is of no real musical consequence, but the brief breath of fresh air that the casual exchange of "Troubles" provides works in two ways: For a casual listener, this shows that the boys have enough of a sense of humor to let it show on their album. But considering that the line involves a 9/11 punchline, the joke is on us: Belly retains its relentless darkness. Burial wishes he was this clever.

"Shhhy" is all about being prouder of your sound, the apathy of the DC hip-hop scene that Educated Consumers talked about last year apparent fodder. It also provides the most obvious musical hook and, therefore, the most accessible excerpt from a cloudy story of flittering digitalis. It is in the same general ballpark as "Tween My Lips" and funky first single "Swampy (Summer Jam)," which will hopefully be a hit this year beyond the insular blog circuit.

These tracks represent the base of Food for Animal's sound, but there's another gimmick that pops up that you don't see coming: Swinging from a Rick Ross intro to an 8-bit blitzkrieg that lasts barely two minutes, "Mutumbo" is the sound of an endless hail of digital noise. That short Rick Ross vocal manipulation pops up again, and it's almost distracting to hear such a deep voice. But it's also amusing in its own peculiar way, and maybe that's just me, but the usual higher pitches of Hy and Vulture V gain added gravitas during a diss when they're dropped that low. It's an interesting psychological effect, but the fact that they use it sparingly doesn't make their potency on the mic any less cutting. This line doesn't even rhyme, but come on: "You're not hot and you're not popular / You're just doin' a lot of MySpacin'." How many groups can you say that for, right?

Speaking of working from your bedroom, the entirety of Belly was recorded at home, which makes the flurry of trebling shrapnel all the more satisfying. These guys were even smart enough to take elements of a genre I've never cared for and make it appealing. Was "Virgogo" made in my nightmare collaboration between GarageBand and every trip-hop punchline I've ever made? Who knows.

The answer doesn't matter. By the time you read this, Food for Animals will have already moved on to find another gap in the growing fissure between Dälek and the Dirty South. You may never hear Absence in the club, but the primordial club-muck of Belly at least has a chance. "You know what, you right / It doesn't matter what you write." No, it doesn't. It only matters that you listen. Food for Animals may not be dystopian, but they are proposing a very interesting future for hip-hop that involves more than dusty grooves and lamenting what was. It involves neon eyeballs and Apple laptops. But more importantly, it involves a city that stands at that great junction between past and future, North and South, urban and suburban, rich and poor. Forget Beyond Hamsterdam and HBO: Belly is the sound of Baltimore.