I'd Love to Turn You On #165 - Deltron 3030 – Deltron 3030

In 2009, I worked with at-risk youth in a public school program in Portland, Oregon. Music provided a touchstone for both staff and students but my coworkers and I often struggled to find music that everyone could agree on that was also appropriate for a classroom setting. My friend and colleague Jim once recommended an album that he found to be a great fit for our unique circumstances: Deltron 3030. Oddly enough, this sci-fi tinged concept album featuring producer Dan the Automator, turntablist Kid Koala, and left-field rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien proved to work incredibly well in our classrooms. Deltron 3030 dropped in the spring of 2000 but I knew nothing about it until Jim enlightened me and now this post gives me an opportunity to extend this favor to you. Shortly after its release, Deltron 3030 became a cult-classic for underground hip-hop, established a high point for each artist’s career, and just happened to lay much of the groundwork for the next year’s debut album by Gorillaz.

Following a bit of exposition about the album’s vision of the future with “State of the Nation,” Deltron 3030 begins in earnest as “3030” slowly builds steam and evolves into a sprawling-but-fleet seven-and-a-half-minute declaration of purpose, style, and absurdity. Running back to back, “Virus” and “Upgrade (A Brymar College Course)” establish the album’s stride while offering irresistibly catchy choruses, sumptuous sonic textures, and compelling beats. My conversation with Jim about this album actually started with “Upgrade” because he thought its chorus, “upgrade your gray matter, because one day it may matter,” offered an excellent theme song for our classrooms. Arriving about halfway through the album, “Madness” allows our protagonist Deltron Zero to reframe his quest for survival as a battle against the forces of complacency and conformity that doubles as a commentary on the state of hip-hop around the year 2000. With a cameo from Damon Albarn, “Time Keeps on Slipping” unites the team that would soon go on to create the virtual band Gorillaz and unveils the sonic blueprint for that project’s very successful first album. Punctuated by an assertive fanfare and featuring a vocal hook from Sean Lennon, “Memory Loss” serves ably as the album’s final full-length song and functions nicely as a bookend with “3030.” Short interludes, announcements, and advertisements make up nine of the album’s twenty-one tracks and deftly balance Kid Koala and Dan the Automator’s highly evocative, dense arrangements and Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s rambling, verbose, and heroic vocal performance.

While this album shares multiple connections to similar projects like Dr. Octagon, Handsome Boy Modeling School, and Gorillaz, Deltron 3030 stands apart because of the remarkable synergy these three artists achieved. The influence of Deltron 3030’s singular take on Afro-futurism extends beyond the genre of underground hip-hop and the various projects of its members and filters into Janelle Monáe’s music, especially her 2013 sophomore album, The Electric Lady. Two years ago, all three members of Deltron 3030 reunited to release their sophomore album, Event 2, which felt at moments like an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle...again. Intentionally or not, this follow-up served as a reminder that a large part of the first album’s success derived from the fact that at the time very few people had any idea what these three artists could accomplish together. Although I can’t be sure that this is what music will sound like in a thousand years, Deltron 3030 remains certainly well ahead of its time and still feels like a future time capsule just waiting for discovery.

-         John Parsell

I'd Love To Turn You On #48 - Handsome Boy Modeling School – So… How’s Your Girl?

There was this time in hip-hop called the 90’s. It’s before rap music had really been fully embraced by the pop charts the way it is today, but it’s after the music had been around long enough to have splintered into a million little subsets, each with their own firm adherents who often had nothing to do with each other. And somehow, straddling them all, comes this little oddity, a concept album ostensibly organized by two boozy dilettantes, Nathaniel Merriweather (in actuality, producer Dan the Automator) and Chest Rockwell (nee Prince Paul), centered around the musical curriculum of a men’s modeling school. All this in turn is (loosely) based on a sketch from Chris Elliott’s short-lived Get A Life TV series, which is sampled throughout to provide some of the continuity for the album. And continuity may be something it needs, given that the music broadly encompasses samples of country love songs slowed down, string quartets looped over a beat, water splashing for a rhythm, and other eccentric ways of putting across their musical ideas. Add to this already strange mix a bevy of guests from across the spectrum of music (and elsewhere) – one track alone credits Sean Lennon, Money Mark, Josh Haden of the group Spain, Paula Frazier of Tarnation, and Father Guido Sarducci – and you end up with… well, this. A silly, off-the-cuff sounding, loosely organized “concept” designed for maximum hookiness and maximum eccentricity.

But wait, that’s not all. Turns out that these guest spots are not just phoned in (except once, literally, for a joke); the folks working alongside Automator and Prince Paul have taken their roles quite seriously indeed, crafting words that, while sometimes humorous, address the real world, not just the silly, seedy world of male modeling that the Chris Elliott sketches portray. And guess what? – it also turns out that Paul and Automator are taking this seriously too. Years after I thought the fun of listening to this had run its course I find that things are actually quite intensely detailed and if the album's not perfect, it's only because they want something of the ramshackle feeling to remain in it. And that continuity I mentioned? Somehow, even with all the diverse sounds and guests, it just flows. Nothing sounds out of place within the weird, catchy little world they’ve created. My favorites are the co-production with DJ Shadow ("Holy Calamity") and Encore's Rakim tribute (over a slowed down Eric B & Rakim sample) in "Waterworld" plus both of Del's appearances ("Magnetizing" and "The Projects (P Jays)"). But the whole thing is pretty damn brilliant, and no less so just because they aim for it to be enjoyable to listen to in addition to meaning something. In fact, I'd even wager that saying something and making it accessible like this is a much harder trick to pull off than it is to come on hard and serious and announce your intentions right out of the gate. I'm still impressed and still digging it over a decade later.

- Patrick Brown