Fake For Real

B-Boys in Occupied Mexico was 2Mex's first true album, a promising beginning, a record which should have boosted the rapper's career. An excellent MC and performer, the guy had the potential of a star, everyone should have expected an opus magnus from him. Such a masterpiece, though, was never delivered. And now, many years later, B-Boys in Occupied Mexico is still 2Mex's best album.

Fondle'em's merit, but also, its mistake, is to have preferred the EP format to any other. For that reason, in a world that still considers LPs as the ultimate masterpiece for music, the legacy of New-York's indie rap scene founding label is not as big as it deserves. Most of its artists, the Cenobites, the Juggaknots or the Arsonists, finally had to transform anthology singles or EPs into real albums, adding to them some demos, freestyles, rarities or new tracks. For some of them, this extension of their previous records was a success, as is the case with the Juggaknots' Re:Release. But for some others, the final output was a bit frustrating and unbalanced, as with The Visualz Anthology, a compilation of Siah and Yeshua's work, released in 2008.

Contrary to what his experimentalist posture suggests, Thavius Beck's music has sometimes been too easy. The ex producer of Global Phlowtations, one of its few members who met some kind of critical recognition in the 2000's, thanks to his releases with Mush Records, Plug Research and Big Dada, sometimes spoiled his music with too many effects and pyrotechnics, and with some big, threatening electronic sounds, sounding like an exaggeratedly gothic version of hip-hop. Many times, though, the individual proved that he was really gifted and talented.

Making one's best so that hip-hop looks like a live experience, strengthening raps with the sounds of "real" instruments, has not always been a successful approach. The most famous group which tried to go this way, The Roots, has sometimes failed at it, coming dangerously close to boredom. And when a rapper proves to be good at this, it is more often in concerts than on records. Toolshed, though, a group from London, Ontario, used this formula fantastically on their second album, a record blended with bouncing guitar, drums, bass and saxophone sounds, reinforced with facetious and dynamic raps, and full of rhythm and scratches.