Beans - End It All

With four years having passed since his last solo album (2007’s ‘Thorns’) and two years since an Antipop Consortium release (2009’s ‘Fluorescent Black’), Beans has built up huge cache of rhymes to fire out over thirteen new beats. For his first record on Anticon, he has drafted in some big names in the electronic scene to build the tracks. Clark, Tobacco and Four Tet all make appearances, even though some of their contributions leave a lot to be desired. Four Tet’s two productions clock in at less than three minutes in total and sound like off-cuts he had lying about the studio. Fortunately there are some revelations in terms of the music. Sam Forgarino, usually found behind the drum kit of Interpol, has created an ominous beat for ‘Electric Bitch’ that would sit comfortably on a Wu-Tang record, and Tobacco’s jittery bleeps and chainsaw synths on ‘Glass Coffins’ are refreshing to hear on a hip hop album.

Working with so many different producers means that the responsibility for holding the whole thing together falls on Beans’ lyrics. They come at you thick and fast. Hitting out at MCs for dumbing down, proclaiming his own prowess and laying down some social consciousness all without pausing to take a breath. Trying to keep up with Beans is often like listening to a lecturer who is dosed up on speed, you know what he’s saying is important but at a certain point you have to give up and just let his words pummel your ears without gaining any meaning from them. The tracks with more defined verses such as ‘Blue Movie’ and ‘Mellow You Out’, which features TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, stand out as the most successful complete songs.

While Antipop’s avant weirdness might be missing from Beans’ solo output what he has to say is a valuable antidote to some of the sentiments found in contemporary American hip hop. If you can keep up you’ll realise that this man knows what he is talking about.