SEBUTONES - 50/50 Where It Counts

50/50 Where It Counts is a crucial record. It counts, indeed, for the Halifax scene, for Canadian rap in general, and for the late 90's indie hip-hop movement. By this time, in 1998, both members of the Sebutones are already well known, locally. But afterwards, their notoriety will rise further, and their respective careers, though quite different, will be both exemplary. Sixtoo and Buck 65, though, don't agree with the praises their joint effort received. The impact of this album, recorded in only two weeks, is astonishing to them.

In the 2000's, while Sixtoo refuses to comment his musical past, especially with the Sebutones, Buck 65 considers on his website – in a series of reviews where, basically, he criticizes all his records – that this album, the only one the duo ever delivered after the Psioriasis cassette, has been botched. He says that it was badly recorded, and that it is much too long.

This is not entirely false. And anyway, how could anyone take seriously a record that starts with a booming...

Let's fuck!
I'll fuck anything that moves!

... and that gets concluded by a so-called "Punk Song", where Buck 65 pretends that he is disgusted by everything?

In this one comment about his album, though, the rapper admits that it has at least one strength: it has plenty of ideas.

Heavy beats, a paranoid feeling, an apocalyptic ambiance, sci-fi lyrics, old movie samples and the monotonous flow of both MCs, make of 50/50 an oppressive and monolithic album. Considering this, and that it is indeed pretty long, it isn't really accessible. And though, this record is less iconoclastic than some others, which both Sixtoo and Buck 65 will deliver in the next decade. After years of rap activism in their peripheral city in Nova Scotia, both are still loyal to the principles of hip-hop: loops, scratches, uncompromising flows, and some diss tracks, make up most of the album.

The Sebutones will not cross the borders of hip-hop music; not yet. But they are incredibly inventive and creative with their sounds. Just a few examples: "We Three Kings" plays with the deep contrast between slow and tribal drums, and some others, sounding like a computer bug; the excellent "Dazed & Confused" transforms skillfully a strange scratch into a loop; castanets become acceptable hip-hop instruments on "Go Back" - and they are quite threatening ones.

A seminal record; one of the first tours de force of two indie icons; a Canadian counterpart for Funcrusher Plus, with its dark and impactful sound; both loyal to hip-hop and challenging it: 50/50 Where It Counts is all of these. And today, so long after its release - and whatever its authors think about it - it deserves to be seen as an underground classic.

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