Jazz With Hip-Hop Bite

Label: US3
Artist: Us3
Album: stop.think.run

Jazz-rapping outfit Us3 are veterans unto their own field unlikely to be challenged by anything remotely similar. Rap mogul Geoff Wilkinson, producer behind the hybrid sound that went platinum in the early nineties, has peddled the unlikely fusion of Hip-Hop and Jazz for over a quarter of a century now. This is why it’s so remarkable that Us3 remain fresher, more surprising and more relevant than the more obligatory and forced Hip-Hop acts on offer now and over the last five years.

Working with a variety of U.K. and U.S. based rap-artists; Wilkinson has remained true to his mission statement of providing rap with a self-perpetuating spinning wheel of creativity. His belief that Jazz is just as easily welcomed to the playlist of the younger audience as it is elsewhere and was once before; he antagonizes the experienced sound and constantly asks new questions of it. With stop. think. run, Us3’s latest album, due for release later this month, more questions are asked and more impressively, left unanswered. The ambiguous concoction of the seasoned Jazz and hip-hop recipe is now merged with soft hints of industrial, pop-sensibilities and even borrows from the Chiptune arena. Midway into the album we’re struck with The Future Ain’t What It Once Was, one of the bravest efforts (whilst remaining conspicuously simple) on this, the seventh studio album under the Us3 guise. It is perhaps the best example of how contemporary the Us3 approach can prove to be.
The tracks are divided by the featured rappers in Sene and Brook Yung, two of the youngest artists Wilkinson has ever worked with. The effect and resulting sound feels like an elegant duel of ideas. Sene and Brook Yung bounce off one another through the opposing tracks, one-and-the-same in ethic, poignancy and energy. Flirting with beats as they go, schooled in the ways of those past, the comparisons to be drawn are vague and tenuous at best. But there’s a definite aftertaste of De La Soul in their rapping, a bite of early-nineties Hip-Hop, when the genre still had its most popular decade ahead of it: staring it in the face.
The album becomes a bravado. It enthrals initially, and then melts together, like a concept album whispered before repose. In this way more than any, it’s unarguably a Jazz album. Completion, like any great Jazz record, brings with it not closure, but hunger. This isn’t Coltrane and it’s not Coleman, but we’re left with the same enthusiasm, the same sense of being party to something both generous and demanding as we would be with A Love Supreme and The Shape of Jazz To Come.
Before all that though we’re hit with the brute force of Gotta Get Out of Here with Brook Yung providing the spits. It’s not often that the lead track surmises the album as a whole. But it’s too true with stop. think. run, which follows on in turn from this tenacious track set to the sounds of Urbania. It’s interesting that the song references Kanye West, and perhaps not altogether coincidental. The commercially successful rappers sound resonates within Us3. In fact, accessible Hip-Hop of the now would do well to tip its collective cap the way of Us3 and other pioneers of the mixing desk. In no song on the album is this more apparent than the unapologetically Jazzy Live Love Music, which somehow manages to steer well clear of being pretentious, a considerable feat, considering some of the subjects on offer. The beat takes a dirty break with Can I Get It? and From The Streets, both fronted by Sene who finds himself accompanied by the flick of a piano and a Dixie-hall load of string. The tracks slow down the show, but bring said show into its own during their respective choruses. Harsh but agreeable lyrics meet the beat that revolves around itself; a gravitational pull to the every sound buzzed and blown, every yelp reaped and sown. This theme continues throughout the album and that’s exactly why it refuses to peak.

Late on in the album Keep Movin’ and Turn It Up do exactly as their given titles promise. Whilst remaining a part of the album, at one, they detach themselves in ideology. Slow-paced and more like the music that proffered Us3 in the early nineties, it’s a welcome reminder that Wilkinson’s efforts have a definite identity. Brought down to its base level, the London based producer is almost exposing himself, but as the listener we’re more taken in than ever. It helps us understand the record on a heightened level. Perhaps this is the albums greatest trick.
At fifteen tracks it’s easy to pre-empt effect and enter the album less than enthusiastically. With one listen, however, caution’s thrown to the wind and its affected aura seeps. Us3’s stop. think. run is as enthusing, as brilliant, and more importantly, as fun as its final track, the obnoxiously good She’s With Me, which is the only song on the album to feature the coarse talents of Sene and Brook Yung together.

Release date: 30th March 09