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In the Eighties, America shouted "It's time to get ill!" and the world followed suit. Everybody got ill. the age of Hip-Hop was born. L'age of d'ip-op as the french called it. British B-boys got especially ill, because in Britain, nobody could rap. Properly, anyway. The UK had a permenent cold, in fact, until some wise ole Ninjas discovered you could drop the lyrics, and redress the attitude within the music....this method of hip-hoperaration developed through the mid-nineties, until the British war-cry developed it's own voice, one without any traces of an American accent. July 1995, London Ninja Tune present the debut album from West London's finest, The Herbaliser - "Remedies". It's time to get Well, y'all. United Funkingdom at it's most firing, The Herbaliser will shake your butt like - uh - nothing from Twickenham ever has. A hybrid of seriously rumping retro jazz grooves and fugged-up turntable tricknology effortlessly sprayed onto a solid steel wall of hiphop, the Herbaliser dare to go where most modern artists refuse to tread; in between the groove that separates those who deal in DAT's from those who Do It Live, courtesy of a live horn section and sum tumpin dubble bass. This long player is a pleasure-chest of jazzy gems; from the back-room ho-down feel of "Scratchy Noise", to the cool, laid back and funky "Styles"; "Bust a Nut" is what happens when a wildstyle welder fuses P-funk with the Gap band, while "Up 4 the Get Downs" is nothin but pumpin' - deep, dark, raw and DIIRRTTTTY. "Wrong Places" heralds the return of the lyric - MC Unknown lyrically parps and slurps like the muted trumpet that lays the break. The gaps are plugged by short stabs and fusion fills, completing a formula designed to treat any disease caused by the curse of drip-hop, easy-core, blandbag and the gorgons of trance. With more kick than a nightMare on steroids, "Remedies" represent the perfeck Cure for a fugged-up generation. Who needs pills when this Herbal shit does the trick? |
