Album Review: Smoke Dza ‘Rugby Thompson’
When I listen to music, I prefer to listen to albums. A good, varied playlist is great, especially when you hang out with people with far ranging musical palates, but there’s nothing like an artist, or a group of artists, having a vision for an album and seeing it through. While hip hop as a whole has gravitated more towards singles in recent years, the hip hop album is back in 2012. LP’s like Ka’s Grief Pedigree, billy woods’ History Will Absolve Me, and Nacho Picasso’s Exalted are powerful and cohesive artistic statements that have forced me to make time to listen to them over and over again. Smoke Dza’s Rugby Thompson is another one of those albums. I’ve been aware of Smoke Dza for a minute, and while his laid back flow and minimalist style hasn’t really wowed me in the past, the self-dubbed “Kushed God” has come into his own on Rugby Thompson. Assisted greatly by NYC producer of the moment Harry Fraud, who produced the album front to back, Rugby Thompson is the album Dza was born to make.
The album title is a play on words involving Smoke Dza’s love for Polo “Rugby” shirts and Steve Buscemi’s win-at-all-costs Boardwalk Empire character Nucky Thompson. On most of his previous projects Dza has been content to stay in the ‘weed rapper’ lane, and while there are still plenty of reefer references throughout the album, Dza comes with a different perspective on Rugby Thompson. He focuses on survival and success through the lens of his drug hustling past and music hustling present, complete with a more rugged style to match Harry Fraud’s raw production. Dza starts out the album with possibly the two finest solo songs he’s ever made in “Rugby Thompson” and “New Jack”. The slow, smoky groove on the title track allows Dza to display his great stream-of-consciousness wordplay “He only pick up when the money’s calling him”, while “New Jack” is a stylistic statement of arrival over the type of hard hitting beat that’s quickly making Harry Fraud a household name. Dza rhymes- “Bitch I’m way iller than your boyfriend/ plus I make more money, you think he cool cuz he ball overseas?/ Shit I ball overseas too, I’m in the game, he won’t never see the league true”. These types of lines show the confidence that touring the world with some of hip hop’s brightest young stars has given to Smoke Dza, allowing him to truly embrace rap as a career.
I first heard Smoke Dza through his work with New Orleans rapper Curren$y and his “Jet Life” crew, of which Dza is practically an honorary member. Curren$y, the current crown prince of weed rap, recently released his major label debut The Stoned Immaculate and lends a stellar verse to the players’ anthem “Baleedat”, making it one of the album’s standout cuts. While Smoke Dza owes a lot of his success to his affiliation with Curren$y, Curren$y’s recent output suggests he could learn a thing or two from Dza about quality control. The Stoned Immaculate falls victim to a lot of the common pitfalls of hip hop albums that Rugby Thompson avoids. Loaded with random guests and inconsistent production, Curren$y’s still solid album shows why making a good major label album can be a tricky proposition. Its singles based format will undoubtedly bring Curren$y a lot of new fans, but as a stand-alone album, it doesn’t work nearly as well as his previous ventures, and Dza and Harry Fraud’s tightly crafted effort makes the disparity even more clear.
Smoke Dza’s greatest strengths as an artist are his ear for beats, his ability to seek out high quality collaborators, and his ability to adapt his style to create seamless collaborations. On Rugby Thompson everyone comes with their A-game, making it the rare hip hop album where every guest is a welcome addition. Dza enlists west coast rhymers Domo Genesis and Schoolboy Q on the braggadocious “Ashtray”, where Q’s choppy flow in particular demonstrates why he’s one of the most sought after young talents in the game. Smoke Dza’s verse makes clear that while he doesn’t sell drugs anymore, it’s a legitimate part of his past and not something he plays up like so many run-of-the-mill trap rappers. Hustling may have been a necessity for Dza at one point in time, but he sounds comfortable trading that life for his new hustle, music.
Not only does Smoke Dza work with MC’s from all over the country, he also works with MC’s from all different age brackets. New York’s younger generation shows up through A.$.A.P. Twelvyy and Action Bronson’s appearances on “Game 7” and “Turnbuckle” respectively. Twelvyy contributes a slurred chorus and a standout coming-of-age verse to “Game 7” while Bronson and Dza trade visual tag-team verses on “Turnbuckle’s” shimmering reggae influenced soundscape. NY’s older generation is represented through appearances by Boot Camp Click legend Sean Price and fellow Polo aficionado Thirstin Howl III.
It seems as if Smoke Dza made all the right decisions in making Rugby Thompson, but tapping Harry Fraud to produce the entire album was undoubtedly his best one. Fraud has built a buzz through his work with Bad Boy’s French Montana and is now working with everyone from Action Bronson to Rick Ross. A Brooklyn native, Harry Fraud grew up with musician parents who helped foster his passion for making music. His unique use of various drums and drum patterns is probably his greatest strength as a producer, but his eclectic sample choices and subtle layering allow him to tailor his tracks to the artists that he works with. His constantly evolving style incorporates chopped and screwed choruses on “Ashtray” and “Rivermonts”, layered and shifting samples on “Kenny Powers”, and even a jazzy golden beat on “Playground Legend”. Rugby Thompson is one of those albums where the sum result is greater than the individual parts. Smoke Dza may never be considered an all-world MC, but with the help of Harry Fraud and several friends he has created an album that is quite simply one of the best albums I’ve heard this year. Grab your copy of the album.
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Written by John Bugbee
Album Review: Hot Chip ‘In Our Heads’
We often spend far too much time searching for the next best thing rather than enjoying and acknowledging what we already have. There is a certain allure, or even sexiness, to the unknown, whether it be music or the opposite sex. It’s not so much the inability to enjoy what we already know, but rather the thought that what we don’t know could be better. If you’re one of these people who constantly find themselves in predicaments like this, you probably fear normalcy and commitment. The catch 22 of all this is of course, if you can’t ever be happy with the normal, you are never going to have anything sustainable. The search is what you crave, not so much the result. And in the end, you could very well end up never finding anything.
London’s Hot Chip released their fifth studio album In Our Heads last week. The first follow up to the critically acclaimed One Life Stand in 2010, the album represents a culmination of sorts for the band. No longer the younger, brash group from the early 2000’s whose songs were as much about quirkiness as they were dance, life has happened to the group and that change is reflected in their music. They have wives, kids, houses…in short they’ve done what we all do, age. Just looking at the song titles when compared to their major label debut Coming On Strong in 2004. On that album you have songs entitled “The Beach Party”, “Playboy”, and “Crap Kraft Dinner”. Now, you are songs like “Don’t Deny Your Heart”, “Always Been Your Love”, and “Ends of the Earth”. Sense a bit more seriousness in their craft?
That’s not to say this album doesn’t deliver what Hot Chip wants to. In the end, this is still “get those feet moving” dance music that you’d expect at your favorite club on a Saturday night. “How Do You Do” and “Don’t Deny Your Heart” are perhaps the most perfect examples of this on the album. They are your classic Hot Chip material: a fast driving electro beat that pushes the song and catchy hooks. But this album features the band continuing to dive into a slower, more methodical, style. “Look at Where We Are” is a beautiful 90’s R&B slow jam that is last dance prom music for hipsters. In a similar style, “Flutes” features seven minutes of build and tempo before getting to the ultimate point that “One day you might realize, that you might need to open your eyes.”
But perhaps the best song on In Our Heads that truly symbolizes the sound of this album is the lengthy “Let Me Be Him” which features the “moment” on this album where at the 4:30 mark Alexis Taylor belts out amongst a church like chant, “Let me be him. My soul, my love, is running away with me, and I won’t leave it all to you.” The album comes to a close with the soothing “Always Been Your Love” which resembles a church congregation chant of unity and togetherness. And perhaps that what a band like Hot Chip wanted to accomplish with their voice and thousands of fans…a feeling and knowledge that we’re all in this together. And that’s precisely why you can’t continue to chase the unknown, because when all is said and done, you’ll be the only one left standing their alone.
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Written by Greg Dahman
Thought on Tracks 
Kishi Bashi Leaves of Montreal
Just over two months after releasing his debut LP 151a, of Montreal violinist K Ishibashi announced his departure from the Athens, GA rock group in a note via Facebook, saying:
“I’m both happy and sad to announce that Kishi Bashi is now my full-time job, thanks to your generous support. I’m happy for the obvious reasons, but extremely sad that I have to part ways with my of Montreal family for awhile.“
The writing has been on the wall for the last several weeks as the buzz around 151a has grown steadily. Kishi Bashi, as has been his moniker as a solo artist, has received wide praise for the record, which was recently selected by the staff of NPR Music as one of the best albums of the year. The staff has remained smitten since Kishi Bashi stopped by their offices for his Tiny Desk performance featured below. With such exposure, the question quickly became when, not if, the violinist would set out on his own.
The news is big for Indianapolis record label Joyful Noise Recordings, who released both 151a and Kishi Bashi’s 2011 EP Room for a Dream . Joyful Noise is also home to of Montreal. I recently had the pleasure of baring witness to Kishi Bashi’s considerable talent at the label’s Fountain Square headquarters. The intimate performance was not unlike the video above, with the violinist rendering a roomful of fortunate listeners speechless. Check out IndyRock Live’s review of the show for more.
Kishi Bashi officially kicks off his summer tour at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works on July 16. Check out his complete list of summer tour dates. I can promise a unique performance not quickly forgotten.
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Written by Rob Peoni