SMOD (self-titled)
LABEL: Nacional Records
Decades after Kool Herc extended the break — ad infinitum — straining the climax of a song until it burst into something entirely different, what remains most exciting about hip-hop is its plasticity. Particularly in the last twenty years or so, the genre has begun to internationalize and borders between niches have been engulfed by the impetus for a global culture. Similarly, hip hop is combining with other musical constructs (and vice versa) making some music difficult to discern between genres: rap and grime are harder and harder to distinguish in 2011 London, Wiley’s recurring father-figure role notwithstanding; Kanye is rapping to music so epic it sounds like movie soundtracks; doseone spent five or six years with an indie-electro-rap-ish band... And those are tame examples.
Hip hop’s plasticity is the handmaiden to its oft-revolutionary aesthetic; it is necessarily malleable, shifting to the context as is required, from seething white-hot violence to exposing the marshmallow beneath the exoskeleton. But rarely does hip hop morph into an unrecognizable form, given its intense reliance on the music of the past. In the most universal sense, hip hop walks backwards into the future, either directly in dialog with the past through sampling or indirectly — more subtly – through the play of memory. As a musical context, it not only indicates the direction toward which an idiom moves; it indicates whence it came.
African hip hop has long sought to occupy this intermediate space I’ve been describing, one delineated by cultural collision. For example, MC Solaar’s first single sampled British funk, while rapping in French, the experience of growing up with African roots in a Western context—in a culture of so-called productivity. And consider the Ghanaian phenomenon of hiplife, a combination of highlife and hip hop music. The examples don’t end, and the music is often excellent. Case in point: SMOD. Returning for their third and best album, wavering between acoustic lilt punctuated by rap on one hand, and rap underlain by a bed of scintillating Malian blues on the other. Except that it never wavers, it’s completely steady and knows exactly what it wants to be.
SMOD could be accused of riding coattails, since their emergence on the international scene is likely due to the band’s frontman being the son of world music darlings Amadou & Mariam. However, it’s an absurd claim, given that the trio of young men have been honing their sound on the Bamako streets since 2000, the result being a razor-sharp dose of chill. Manu Chao produced Amadou & Mariam’s breakthrough fourth album, and after hearing SMOD play, Chao returned later to record and produce the young band's music. SMOD and Chao often met on the terrace of Amadou & Mariam’s house, and Chao’s creed regarding the recording process with SMOD became “You don’t mess with what happens on the terrace.”
The result is a crisp, fresh sound, glittering in its ecstatic simplicity: a guitar, a couple of voices, and the subtle craft of Chao’s polishing production evoke the sultry African nights spent on the roof. SMOD’s sound is remarkably robust and, even in its minimalism, the album doesn’t become stale. Compare the vibrant, rapid diction on “Tidjidja” to the plaintive, tactile strum of “Les Jeunes Filles du Maliba,” a song about the ladies, which is immediately followed by the rollicking distortion of “J’ai Pas Peur du Micro.” Frankly, this last song is a sore spot on the album, if not simply for sounding entirely out of place, though I do appreciate the attempt at variation, as well as Kenny Arkana’s guest verse.
Besides this misstep, the album is excellent all the way through. It’s a fairly obvious concept, and perhaps that’s why it works so well: Malian guitar and singing combined with French rapping, along with some more Westernized strumming styles. But we all know that the ideas with the most brilliance and import are those which, after their inception, seem obvious. “We couldn’t beat the Americans at their own game,” says Ousco, one vocalist of the trio. The natural next step — so that they didn’t simply copy their American rap idols — was to “...try and come from our own culture.” And what else can you really ask for, after hearing this record? In allowing the intersection of so many different idioms, SMOD manages to supersede them all, never becoming subsumed.
What’s most interesting here — besides the emphasis on acoustic instrumentation, itself a topic involved enough for another article - is that while Manu Chao’s musical and lyrical influence is indelible, particularly with respect to vocal production and the bubbly basslines, the music is always idiosyncratic, never imitative. This is a testament to the strength of SMOD’s aesthetic. They are Afro-hop trailblazers (their nomenclature). It’s a shame I don’t speak enough French to understand more of the highly-political lyrics, but the energy that this excellent music exudes translates across cultures. Definitely recommended.
REVIEWED BY MANUEL ABREU
MANUEL’S FAVORITE TRACKS: “Les Jeunes Filles du Maliba” • “Dakan” • “Fitri Waleya”
FREE MP3: “Ca Chante”
