Albums

Turntablism! Scratches, cuts, virtuosity! This is the usual package delivered by D-Styles of the Beat Junkies, one of the best DJs from this West Coast Filipino community which, curiously, is full of experts in vinyl handling. Moreover, not content with excelling in that domain and illuminating others' records with his scratch talents, he released one of the rare albums of this kind that are listenable and exciting from the beginning to the end.

There's been another Madlib before Madlib, before he became this overrated beatmaker, vaguely experimental but, to be honest, a bit irregular, and sometimes even boring and vain. In 2000, his helium-voiced alter-ego Quasimoto had released the great The Unseen. And the year before, the band Otis Jackson Jr. was part of, along with Wildchild and DJ Romes, had released Soundpieces: Da Antidote, one of PBW's Stones Throw finest records.

In 1991, with his first album, Del tha Funky Homosapien had demonstrated that other ways existed for the Californian scene, apart from gangsta rap. Two years later, 93 'till Infinity made the same statement, thanks to atmospheric beats, complex rhymes, and lyrics not too outrageous, and extraordinarily mature for rappers as young as the Souls of Mischief.

This is a natural phenomenon. Each time we understand that an artist with a tremendous talent and potential will never take off, once we see that he will stay a well-kept secret for the happy few, that he will forever release imperfect albums and miss his appointment with fame, we also realize that his greatest record, in the absence of the expected masterpiece, may finally be the first that generated a buzz. As far as Busdriver is concerned, this record was Temporary Forever.

Artistic success works like a lottery. Talent is one of its conditions, but it doesn’t weight much compared with random encounters which will allow such or such to be better exposed than others. And though patience and time help separating the wheat from the chaff, what can they do for grains scattered on the way? In other words, how many good records have never been celebrated by any? And when they have been celebrated, how many are forgotten because the media which praised them has disappeared itself? Thousands, without a doubt, and From Point A to H could be one of those.