Fake For Real - English Version

With such an alias, this one laid clearly his cards on the table. Arthur Arellanes III's music, indeed, was both bizarre and arty. Once a spoken word artist belonging to the California's underground hip-hop scene – the guy played sets with Blackalicious - Bizzart explored further the nerdy, crossover, intimate and experimental kind of rap launched by Anticon around the year 2000. He did even better, proposing one of the most accomplished products of the genre.

The transition of Kool Keith from the funky Ultramagnetic MCs to the more futuristic and hallucinated Dr. Octagon was partly due to the rapper and producer Godfather Don. Momentarily recruited by the former, in 1992, he didn't stay too long in the group, his dark beats not fitting completely with the rest. This didn't dissuade Kool Keith, though, from continuing collaborating with him.

Though Astronautalis is a key player on the indie hip-hop scene - at least regarding the folk rap subgenre – none of his albums is flawless. The very first, You and Yer Good Ideas, was full of promises, with some great tracks like the admirable "Ocean Walk", but it was still a bit too green, too amateur. The next one, Mighty Ocean and Nine Dark Theaters, was the exact opposite; the production was so polished that it sounded almost too clean, too nice. And the one after, Pomegranate, was only partly convincing. In 2011, though, he reached a perfect balance with This Is Our Science, which he released on Fake Four Inc.

Finally, Oddjobs' end had been a good thing. These rappers from the Midwest have never been as interesting as when they split into two new acts, the fire-raising duo Power Struggle, and Kill the Vultures. The Careless Flame, one of the latter's LPs, confirmed it. After they merged jazz and rap in a punk and corrosive way, with their first record, they perfected the formula with the second one.

An extended version of the Waterworld LP, released in small numbers in 1999, Masters of the Universe had caused a sensation in hip-hop's underground by 2000. Binary Star's kind of rap, though, was not exactly the boldest or more experimental one, despite some gothic-sounding songs and the duo's integrity.

This was Clothes Horse's second life. After it released the very special records of its founding members, the Saskatoon label had taken care of Canadian rap's lost legends. It started in 2004, with Recyclone, whose first records have been rereleased, and who made a new album with soso. And in 2006, it was the turn of Thesis Sahib, the prolific rapper, the designer of cover arts for the likes of Alias, Deeskee, Bleubird and Buck 65, the author of many records, in solo, or with Bending Mouth, the Imaginary Friends or Les Swashbuckeling Napoleons.

So many years later, the bizarre and indigestible Pyramidi is just a distant memory, some remainder of the early 2000's and the short-lived abstract hip-hop era represented by labels such as Mush and Anticon. And though, and though… it aged much better that so many other records released by the same time by similar minded artists.

If Divine Styler has become a cult artist for fans of letfield hip-hop fans, this may be due less to his first album, the excellent Word Power, than to its follower, a quite experimental Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light. Released unexpectedly on a major label, at a time when those would sign any rapper, this record challenged radically hip-hop's usual frameworks.

Despite his significant background, his key role in launching the Project Blowed, his membership to Haiku D'Etat, and even his featuring on a Grand Royal mixtape, it took a while for Abstract Rude to complete his first album, P.A.I.N.T.. He finally released this record in 2001 on Battle Axe Records; a record which, more than 10 years after, and in spite of some lengthy, soporific and weak r'n'b moments, is still the best in his solo discography.

It starts with an almost unremarkable track, a very cold kind of rap declaimed with a deep voice from the back of the bathroom, and built on a few piano keys ("Textbook Life"). The three following songs are as cadaveric, and each time weirder and more bizarre than the previous one, more and more burdened with bleeps and background noises: "Smoke is Smoke", to contest the virtues of weed, "Tunnel Vision", a discussion on love, and "Unstoppable 03", which topic is still unclear to the French guy I am.