Busdriver: Beau$Eros

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  12 Apr 2012 in Review

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Busdriver is the one consistent Project Blowedian, whose quirky works have sadly been slept on by fellow older Blowedians still stuck in freestyle fellowship mode. In fact he is more appreciated by oddball indie rockers Deerhoof and Islands (all of whom he’d collaborated with) than the average hip hop fan. Latest album, the synth pop-heavy Beaus$Eros, is Busdriver straying even further away from the genre he was brought up in, not doing any service to attracting the hip hop crowd.

But who gives a flying expletive? The album and Busdriver’s mantra can be summed up in the line “I appeal to folks that you can’t by acting awkward” on ‘Bon Bon Fire’, a hilarious unconscious response to Childish Gambino’s ‘Bonfire’. His cover of Animal Collective posted on Youtube proved to be predictive as album opener ‘Utilitarian Uses of Love’ (yes, he loves oddball song titles) borders on the band’s LSD sounds.

Single ‘Kiss Me Back to Life’, which involved Busdriver going to full on evil synth pop territory, shows how uninterested he is in even bothering to cater to the hip hop crowd anymore – and we absolutely love it. While a lot of cats have dubbed him as a conscious rapper (a label reserved for sterile old rappers like Common), Busdriver’s lyrics are really vague words thrown together in the style of Williams S Burroughs’ cut-up word technique.

However ‘NoBlacksNoJewsNoAsians’ is pure anarcho-rap, a rapid fire staccato of big brother imageries over an ominous beat – it’s him at a rare form where the message is clear and not impenetrable for vague’s sake.

LISTEN TO: ‘Kiss Me Back to Life’ ‘NoBlacksNoJewsNoAsians’ ‘Beaus$Eros’
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RATING: 3

Get on the bus at busdriverse.com.